Cheryl Gillan: Mr. Speaker, I apologise for any misunderstanding with the Chair.
	May I congratulate the Secretary of State on keeping not one but two jobs in the Cabinet, and say diolch yn fawr to the hon. Member for Carmarthen, West and South Pembrokeshire (Nick Ainger) for his courtesy to me during his time in office. May I also say half a goodbye to the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit pik), and extend a warm welcome on behalf of the official Opposition to the Under-Secretary of State for Wales, the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) and the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams) to their new positions on the Front Bench for Wales.
	Does the Minister acknowledge the importance of the Welsh Language Act, which has done so much to protect and enhance the position of the Welsh language, and also acknowledge the main advocate and architect of that Act, my right hon. Friend Wyn Roberts, the noble Lord Roberts of Conwy? Will the Minister join me in paying tribute to the dedication that Lord Roberts has shown to Wales throughout his long and distinguished public service career, and wish him a long and happy retirement?

Daniel Kawczynski: I congratulate the Prime Minister on becoming the leader of our country. He said[Hon. Members: More!] He said that he would, unlike his predecessor, listen to the people of our country. With that in mind, can I inform him that the great men and women of Shrewsbury have spoken, and they have voted overwhelmingly against unitary authority status for Shropshire? Four out of the five district councils are against it, as am I, and as is my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. Dunne). Will the right hon. Gentleman listen to the people of Shrewsbury and please not impose this ghastly unitary authority status on us?

David Cameron: First of all, I agree with the Prime Minister about Alan Johnston. It is fantastic news that he is on his way back to his family.
	Recent attempts to cause massive loss of life in London and in Glasgow remind us of the very real threat that we face in this country. There are a number of measures that we believe would make a difference. First, we support the use of telephone tap evidence in court so that we do not just catch these people but convict them and lock them up. Six weeks ago, the Government agreed to our proposal for a Privy Council review of this issue. Can the Prime Minister tell us how soon they will publish the names, when will it meet, and when will it report?

Gordon Brown: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. I hope that, right across the House as right across the country, there can be unity in our determination to fight terrorism. I want to remind people of just how brave and courageous the explosives experts in London and those who tackled the terrorist activity at Glasgow airport were. I hope that we can continue on an all-party basis to agree measures that are necessary in this country to deal with the terrorist threat. On the specific question of intercept, I can tell him that we will go ahead with our investigation, carried out on Privy Council terms, and, of course, I shall consult him and the leader of the Liberal party on the names of the people who will conduct it.

Gordon Brown: We can co-operate on the issues ahead, but the right hon. Gentleman has to look at the policies that he has been putting forward and examine whether they are the right things for this time as well. I also have to make the point to him that the unfunded change is no change at all. If he is not prepared to support with financial resources the policing, the law and order and all the public services that are necessary, we will not be able to agree on the way forward.
	In the light of the events of the last few days, I hope that the country can come together and agree these measures. I have offered conversations with the right hon. Gentleman on a number of issues, including intercept, and on other issues we are prepared to co-operate not only with the Leader of the Opposition but with other parties. It is vital that the message is sent out to the rest of the world that we will stand strong, steadfast and united in the face of terror.

Gordon Brown: I agree. Let me add my thanks for the work done at Glasgow airport. Not only did a number of employees at the airport come to the rescue and take action against those who were later arrested, but, as a result of the determination of the British people to send out a message that terrorism will not disrupt our way of life, the airport returned to normal within 24 hours. I will certainly take on board my hon. Friend's comments.

Rosie Cooper: My right hon. Friend has spoken often of his commitment to improving patients' access to NHS services. Does he have any further information on plans to develop services on the Ormskirk site of the Southport and Ormskirk hospital, with special regard to the urgent care centre and in recognising the benefit of providing the right local services in local settings?

Gordon Brown: I have visited Afghanistan and have talked to our brave troops who are doing an excellent job on behalf not just of this country, but of a combined NATO exercise that involves more than 30 countries in putting troops and support on the ground in Afghanistan. The House must remember that Afghanistan is the front line against the Taliban, and if we allow Afghanistan to become a weaker country again, the Taliban will be back in the way that we saw before the events of 11 September. I have nothing but praise for our brave troops. I know that there have been casualties and I am sorry that a number of people have lost their lives only in the last week, but there is immense international support within and outside NATO for continuing this fight. The way it is going to be fought is on three levels: first, to improve the security in Afghanistan; secondly, to ensure that there is political reconciliation; and thirdly, as my hon. Friend rightly says, we have to give people a stake in the future of Afghanistan. That is why we are discussing, as a matter of urgency, economic measures that can help the Afghan people.

Andrew Lansley: I thank the Secretary of State for advance notice of his statement. But is that it? The NHS an immediate priority for the Prime Minister? And what is the immediate priority? An 11-month review. If the Secretary of State really thinks we shall leave him alone for a year while he finds out what is going on in the NHS, he has another think coming.
	It is 4 July today: I thought that it would be NHS independence day, but it did not turn out to be. I was disappointed by what I heard, andnotwithstanding a letter from the Secretary of StateNHS staff, along with the public, will be disappointed.
	For a start, we need to know what on earth is going on. A fortnight ago, the NHS chief executive said in his report:
	in the autumn we will set out a clear, strategic direction for the NHS going forward.
	That report is now so much chip paper. The Secretary of State has started with the same self-congratulatory material that we got from his predecessor. He cited the Commonwealth Fund report. I hope that he has read it; yesterday, this incoming Secretary of State did not seem to have read much.
	The Commonwealth Fund report compares Britain with only one other European country. On page 9, it says that the UK is worst on hospital-acquired infections; contrary to the Secretary of State's self-congratulatory statement, levels of C. difficile have not been stemmed, but are continuing to rise. On page 15, the report places the UK worst on access to out-of-hours GP services and worst for waiting times. On page 21, it states that the UK has the highest mortality rates after adjusting for factors unrelated to health care [Interruption.]
	Perhaps the Minister of State, Department of Health, the hon. Member for Exeter (Mr. Bradshaw) has read it, if the Secretary of State has not. He says that the UK comes out best overall. Does he know why? The report puts into the equation what it regards as an efficiency measure, which it calculates on the basis of how much is spent. It adjusts the whole table on the basis of the fact that we spend less in the United Kingdom than Germany, Canada, Australia or New Zealand. Spending less is the main reason why the Secretary of State and his Ministers think that UK health care is best.
	The only thing that the Secretary of State seems genuinely to have understood is that morale in the NHS is at rock bottom. In a recent  Health Service Journal survey, NHS staff were asked whether morale was good or poor: 4 per cent. said that it was good, 0 per cent. said that it was excellent and 66 per cent. said that morale was poor or very poor. What on earth have we heard in the Secretary of State's statement that would change any of that? We know what has to happen. We have published a White Paper that sets out direction and leadership. If the Secretary of State would only look at that, he would find things that clearly need to be done.
	First, the core principles of the NHS need to be entrenched in statute. We are prepared to do that; apparently, the Secretary of State's predecessors were prepared to as well, although with the exception of the principle that public funds for health care should be devoted solely to NHS patients. We subscribe to that principle. Will the Secretary of State now say that he will do the same?
	Secondly, we need no more pointless organisational upheaval. My right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) has been saying that for a year, and finally Ministers have accepted it, so we can put that one down. Thirdly, the Government need to set the resources and objectives, but not to interfere in the day-to-day decisions of the national health service. In a recent poll, 67 per cent. of NHS staff and 71 per cent. of the public agreed with that proposition. Where is that today? If there were such an acknowledgement by the Secretary of State, he would scrap targets immediately.
	Fourthly, we need to take decisions close to patients. I am astonished that the incoming Secretary of State said nothing today about the centrality of the family doctor service and primary care, having a primary care-led service and strengthening commissioning. Fifthly, we need independent regulation of health care providers; even his predecessor acknowledged that we needed independent regulation. We need not a review but legislation in the next parliamentary Session to achieve those things.
	I have mentioned five long-term reforms, of which the Secretary of State has acknowledged only one. The NHS desperately needs leadership and direction. Reform in the NHS is confused and incoherent, and on its own admission, the Department of Health has no vision of where the NHS is going. We set out a blueprint. Come on, Secretary of State, steal our clothes! We need to show the NHS that politicians can work together for the long term to give it the framework that it really needs. Only if there is that long-term framework can we deal with the real challenges of demography, technology, productivity and improving public health outcomes.
	The Secretary of State said that he was dealing with immediate issues, but he mentioned only one, with something that should have been done years ago. Will he abolish the top-down centralised targets that stop NHS professionals from doing their jobs and distort clinical priorities? Will he make the allocation of NHS resources fair and independent? We have asked for that, the Health Committee has asked for it, and two weeks ago his predecessor said that she thought it was the right thing to do.
	Will the Secretary of State stop major service reconfigurations? He is apparently going to put a brake on them and use the independent reconfiguration panel. When he goes to his new colleague, Sir Ara Darzi, and mentions that he is going to do that, Sir Ara Darzi will be amused, because in Hartlepool he was used by Ministers to bring forward proposals on reconfiguration, which were promptly overturned by the independent reconfiguration panel. That is not much of a recommendation for the policy-making skills of Sir Ara Darzi.
	Will the Secretary of State tell the House how it can be right, in terms of clinical need and patient care, for accident and emergency departments in Surrey and Sussex that treat up to 300,000 people to be shut down, while in Bishop Auckland hospital in Durham, which serves the former Prime Minister's constituency, an accident and emergency department that treats 125,000 people is apparently absolutely fine?
	Will the Secretary of State create additional training posts and assure well-qualified UK-based junior doctors that they will have an opportunity for specialty training? How can an incoming Secretary of State for Health not recognise that the crisis in junior doctor training is an immediate issue to be tackled? If the Secretary of State is so keen on a review, will he today initiate the independent review that we have called for on NHS ITone that really listens to the people working in the NHS?
	Five long-term reforms are required. There are five urgent issues. What have we got? Two. Two out of 10: those are the Secretary of State's marks so far. We would give the NHS the priority that it really needs by taking the action required. Where is the immediate priority that the Prime Minister promised? Where is the autonomy and accountability that the NHS is calling out for? Where is the leadership and the direction that the NHS so badly needs? The NHS is there for us. Why will not the Government trust NHS staff to deliver?

Alan Johnson: That was yesterday. I have had time to read it overnight, and I am deeply unimpressed. There is some tinkering around with detail that I would be pleased to talk to the hon. Gentleman aboutparticularly in the context of GP practitioners, which is an important issuebut the central plank of Conservative party policy is that we ought to hand the NHS over to some kind of 1960s public corporation, and it should be run completely independently by that huge quango. That will not work. I cannot think of a worse recipe for addressing the problems that we have in the NHS, which are about the work force believing that their views have been completely ignored in the context of the issues that have led to change, and that they are being talked down to by Whitehall, rather than their having a role in deciding the issues, based on clinical need, and patient care being an absolute priority.
	The hon. Gentleman said that morale had reached rock bottom. I doubt whether it has reached as low a level as it reached during the 1980s, but I accept that morale is low. He cannot make up his mind whether he wants things to be top-down or locally decided. He quotes the example of A and E reconfiguration in Sussex. That is a local, clinically-driven decision happening in that area. It is absolutely right that we should allow those proposals to go on. Incidentally, nine out of 10 reconfiguration proposals are decided and agreed locally, and do not even get referred to me for decision by the overview and scrutiny committee.
	We are not saying that the statement solves all the problems in the NHS. Of course there are problems in relation to junior doctors and problems to be tackled in a whole range of areas, but I hope that when Members on the Opposition Benches have had time to reflect, they will agree about using a team of highly respected clinicians who work in the NHS day-in and day-out. Incidentally, Professor Sir Ara Darzi will continue with his practice for two days a week, even while he is a Minister. It is right that he is a Minister, because if we handed the review to someone outside the NHS, and then outside Government when the review was delivered, that would be far less powerful than having someone conducting the review and being in government to ensure that the review is implemented.
	The Conservative party has crossed the Rubicon. You have crossed the Rubicon in relation to getting rid of the patient passport. You have crossed the Rubicon in making the NHS a priority

Norman Lamb: I thank the Secretary of State for the advance copy of his statement. As an aside, the new Government, under the new Prime Minister, have said that they want to strengthen Parliament. May I suggest that providing copies of statements a little earlier than traditionally happens would be a sensible reform? That would mean that there could be a much more informed debate, rather than Members trying to come up with an intelligent response in the 35 minutes before the statement is made. I would be grateful if that could be considered.
	The statement is surely something of an admission of failure, given that after 10 years of the Government's stewardship of the NHS, they are still searching a strategic direction. It comes after the Cabinet Office's review of the Department, which was pretty scathing about the leadership offered and the lack of strategic direction. Nevertheless, I give it a cautious welcome, provided that the Government are prepared to examine fundamentally the serious weaknesses in their stewardship of the NHS, primarily the far too great centralisation of the way in which the service is run. I welcome the fact that consideration will be given to a constitution because that approach seems entirely sensible.
	I am worried that it appears that the process will be entirely led by clinicians and health professionals. Will it involve patient representatives, other groups with a direct interest and the public? I appreciate that the public will be consulted, but will only clinicians and health professionals make all the decisions and recommendations?
	There are some fundamental weaknesses regarding the four areas that the review will examine. I was amazed that no reference was made to health inequalities and fairness. I raised that point during yesterday's debate. Health inequalities have increased under the Government in recent years, not reduced, despite the Government target on cutting such inequalities. Will the Secretary of State reassure me that even though there was no reference to health inequalities in the statement or the terms of reference, the review will examine them as a central issue?
	The proposals are pretty thin on the question of productivity. More and more people tell me that despite the enormous record investment, which we supported, money could be used much more effectively to achieve outcomes for patients who need help. Will there be a central look at how to improve productivity in the NHS?
	There has been a series of contradictory reforms over the past 10 years. Structural changes have subsequently been reversed, so I welcome the fact that there will be no more such changes. However, will the review address something that the former Secretary of State recognised in a speech that she made just before she stood down: the local democratic deficit in the NHS? She said that there was a need to strengthen local accountability. Yesterday, the Prime Minister said that he would look to devolve power genuinely. How seriously will the review address providing genuine democratic accountability locally in the NHS?
	The Secretary of State said that existing problems needed addressing, but he referred to only one: hospital-acquired infections. He said that he would commit additional resources to tackling that problem, but how much extra will he provide for the strategy? Will this not be, again, too much of a top-down approach, and will it sufficiently engage staff? The Department was supposed to be producing a guidance note on the use of antibiotics, which is critical to tackling hospital-acquired infections, but so far that has not appeared.
	Finally, a number of existing problems need to be addressed, especially regarding out-of-hours care and access to NHS dentistry. Will the review examine those problems, too?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. If this is not stating the obvious, may I just say to the House that the opening exchanges have been very extended? Protecting Back Benchers is the job of the Chair, but, equally, I hope that Back Benchers will help the Chair to get as many people in as possible. I ask that questions are brief and that answers are concise.

Alan Johnson: The important point about any reconfiguration involving community hospitals is that there should be local dialogue with the patient voice included in the locally driven process. I remind the hon. Gentleman that we put 750 million of capital into community hospitals. Some closures have been agreed by local health service professionals, but every time that that has happened, there has been an insistence that a new service is provided. Sometimes that service is much closer to patients' homes and is a community resource. The health service that we inherited 10 years ago, let alone that of 60 years ago, cannot ossify and be set in aspic. It is important that such changes happen, but the patient voice is absolutely crucial when there is any change.

Alan Johnson: No, sadly not. I always like to say something encouraging to the hon. Lady, but I cannot say that we will put the measures on hold. Indeed, it would be betraying the patient if we put all change on hold, because many of the changes taking place across the country are necessary. There must be a process of local consideration, and I am not going to stop that consideration from taking place. If the case is referred to me by the overview and scrutiny committee, I promise the hon. Lady that I will refer it on to the clinicians on the independent reconfiguration panel.

Alan Johnson: Even I would not get brain surgery mixed up with the measures that the hon. Lady mentions. I am pleased about her remarks about my predecessor, who did indeed say the things that the hon. Lady said she did, and who put in place the improvement teams. We are now doubling the number of those teams. I am happy to praise the Royal Marsden, and indeed Kingston hospital, which I visited on Saturday, which has had tremendous success in tackling MRSA. We need to ensure that that success is replicated elsewhere.

Alan Johnson: I am not sure whether I can set a time scale, but that was an extremely important report. We need to study it carefully and work with the Alzheimer's Society to see how we can resolve the problems. The review is crucial. The right hon. Gentleman will have a chance to see the terms of reference in the House of Commons Library, but, as I mentioned, Professor Darzi will look particularly at the new challenges of an ageing population.

David Tredinnick: May I congratulate the Secretary of State on his promotion, but say to him that I am astonished that Professor Darzi is working only two days a week on the project? I thought that it was urgent. Surely he should be doing more. May I alert the right hon. Gentleman to a potential problem at his Department of which he may not be aware? There are two important reports on the regulation of Chinese medicine and herbs by Professor Pitillo and the late Lord Chan. He must act on them because European legislation is round the corner and it would be very much in the mode of Aneurin Bevan, who had a homeopathic doctor and wanted a fully integrated health service.

Alan Johnson: Well, well, if it was good enough for Nye, it is good enough for me. I will look into that, but may I clarify the fact that Professor Darzi is working two days a week for the NHS. He is an esteemed surgeon, and he does that free of charge, incidentally. It is important that he carries on his practice. I know that the Opposition will not appreciate this. I heard their comments from a sedentary position about his being a Minister, but I think it is right that he is a Minister and that he continues to practise. That gives him a special focus. He is already hugely esteemed and highly valued in the profession, but taking away one or other of those aspects would not make his role any easier and, indeed, would diminish it.

Sally Keeble: In relation to the shape and location of hospital services, may I tell my right hon. Friend that our most pressing need in Northampton is for a new acute hospital. Will he ensure that when the proposals for that are drawn up, they will be expedited through the Department and given financial supportI see our new Chief Secretary to the Treasury on the Front Benchso that my constituents in a growing town can have the quality of hospital that they deserve for the 21st century?

Evan Harris: The Secretary of State spoke about a more robust partnership between patients and policy makers based on trust, honesty and respect. With reference to rationing, which means that some effective treatments are not available on the NHS, will he be the first Minister to accept that rationing is taking place and that that need to be done transparently and rationally, which the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence seeks to do?

Greg Clark: Whatever the Secretary of State's intentions, my constituents will be worried by yet another review into the NHS, just as they will be worried by the absence from his statement of any reference to the story in the  Financial Times that the previous Chancellor of the Exchequer, in his last act, cut by a third the NHS capital budget. Will the right hon. Gentleman reassure my constituents that neither the review nor that policy change will have any bearing on the approval of the new Pembury PFI hospital in my constituency announced by the current Chief Secretary three months ago? Can he reassure us that that will be unaffected by his statement and that policy change?

Peter Bone: How will the Secretary of State's statement help my constituent, Mrs. Ruby Waterer, a 79-year-old, who went to hospital with an eye complaint only to be told that she would go blind if she did not have three injections. When Mrs. Waterer asked when she could have those, she was told that she could not have them on the NHS, but that she could go down the road a couple of miles and have them done privately for 3,300. That is not the Government's intention, so how will the Secretary of State help Mrs. Waterer?

Lindsay Hoyle: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision for palliative care for persons who are suffering from a terminal illness; and for connected purposes.
	In another place, Baroness Finlay has steered through a similar Bill, without amendment, so it is with that which I wish to continue in this House.
	Palliative care is part of supportive care and it embraces many elements of supportive care. It has been defined by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence as affirming life and regarding dying as a normal process; providing relief from pain and other distressing symptoms; integrating the psychological and spiritual aspects of patient care; offering a support system to help patients to live as actively as possible until death; and offering a support system to help the family cope during the patient's illness and in their own bereavement.
	As at January 2006, in England, Wales and Northern Ireland there were 193 specialist in-patient units providing 2,774 beds, of which 20 per cent. were NHS beds; 295 home care servicesthis figure includes both primarily advisory services delivered by hospice or NHS-based community palliative care teams and other more sustained care provided in the patient's home314 hospital based services; 234 day care services; and 314 bereavement support services.
	Everyone facing a life-threatening illness will need some degree of supportive care in addition to treatment for their condition. NICE has defined supportive care for people with cancer, and with some modification the definition can be used for people with any life-threatening condition. For example, I should like it to be extended to cover sufferers of motor neurone disease.
	About 5,000 people are estimated to be living with motor neurone disease in the United Kingdom, and half of those with MND die within 14 months of diagnosis. Many people with MND are unable to access the palliative care services that they require. In a survey carried out by the Motor Neurone Disease Association in 2005, only 39 per cent. of people with MND had been referred to specialist palliative care services. In addition, there are unacceptable geographical variations in the quality of service provision and that can have a negative impact on the quality of life of people with MND and their families. Not surprisingly, the association believes that specialist palliative care services should be available to everyone with MND in a setting and at a time of their choice.
	My Bill seeks to broaden the scope of palliative care to cover all those with a terminal illness. It also aims to cater for the needs of those suffering from a terminal illness in allowing them the choice of where to die. In December 2005, a report by the NHS Confederation highlighted the real need to improve end-of-life care for the terminally ill. The report showed that 56 per cent. of terminally ill patients would prefer to die at home, but only 20 per cent. do so. Alternatively, only 11 per cent. of people want to die in hospital, yet 56 per cent. do so. Better co-ordination between service providers is urgently needed if we are to improve end-of-life care for the terminally ill.
	We also need better access to palliative care services. According to Marie Curie Cancer Care, more than 155,000 die of cancer every year, yet Help the Hospices points out that only 3,250 hospice beds are available, and 2,489 are supplied by the voluntary sector. I have campaigned for many years, urging the Government to increase funding to hospices, particularly children's hospices such as Derian House based in my constituency, which is a leader in child care. We must ensure that the Government release more funding. It is alarming that children's hospices are the poor relation in palliative care.
	First, there is an acute shortage of paediatric palliative care medicine consultants. Secondly, children's hospices receive only in the region of 5 per cent. of funding from official sources, compared with 30 per cent. for adult hospices, so we can already see the vast difference in funding from the NHS. I want that anomaly to be addressed, in addition to the clear postcode lottery that exists with palliative care. Terminal illness places great strain on families and loved ones. The least they can expect is to have the necessary support and help in making those final days as comfortable as possible. Extending palliative care would not involve a huge increase in expenditureit mainly requires specialist knowledge in the use of pain-relieving drugs and holistic care to ease the dying process. Marie Curie Cancer Care, in its report Dying at Home, states that for every 1 invested in home palliative care services, 2 will be freed up for the NHS. Despite that, 80 per cent. of resources are allocated to hospital based care. We need to shift the emphasis in the funding streams.
	In recent years, great strides have been made in palliative carewe all recognise that. Our hospices do a wonderful job in supporting the terminally ill and their families. However, we need to do much more to support the terminally ill. We must ensure that their needs are catered for and that access to treatments, help and support are equal regardless of postcode. The answer is not to legalise euthanasia or assisted suicide. Everyone has the right to life and the right to palliative care. That is what my Bill aims to achieve and I commend it to the House.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Lindsay Hoyle, David Taylor, Jim Dobbin, Mr. David Crausby, Geraldine Smith, Mr. David Amess, Mr. Julian Brazier, Mr. Ben Wallace, Mr. Nigel Evans, Simon Hughes, Dr. Brian Iddon and Mr. Bob Laxton.

Peter Hain: I beg to move, That the Bill be read a Second time.
	The Bill provides for a new system of child maintenance in Britain. At its heart is the commitment to ensure that whatever happens to the relationship between two parents, the interests of children must always be paramount. However, the Bill also learns from the lessons of the past. It makes tackling child poverty the No. 1 priority for the child maintenance system by ensuring that more of the maintenance paid goes directly to the children and by maximising the number of children living apart from one or both of their parents for whom effective child maintenance arrangements are in place.
	The Bill actively promotes parental responsibility by removing the barriers that prevent parents from reaching their own voluntary agreements. Never again will mutually agreed maintenance arrangements be forcibly overturned by a compulsion for parents with care receiving benefits to use the Child Support Agency. The Bill embeds the principle of choice whereby those on benefits should have the same choice as those not on benefits to make their own arrangements or to utilise the new child maintenance and enforcement commissionCMECto access the statutory scheme. For the first time, the system will no longer discriminate against people simply because they are poor.

Jo Swinson: I have dealt with cases involving the self-employed and non-resident payments. On avoiding payments, the Secretary of State's predecessor agreed with me on 27 November last yearreported in  Hansard column 815that the variations regulations were not working well and needed to be reformed. One problem is that at the moment most variations cases go to a tribunal and some non-resident payers use that as a delaying tactica form of bureaucratic sabotage. One of my constituents has gone through six tribunals. Can measures be included in the Bill to enable specialist teams of advisers and arbitrators at the new CMEC to scrutinise variations or exceptions cases at that early stage, in order to avoid sending everything to a tribunal, which causes delays in getting vital maintenance money to children and also costs the taxpayer?

Chris Grayling: Absolutely. Having waited so long for these essential reforms on such an important subject, which affect the lives of so many families in the UK, it is essential that we get them right.
	Let me return to the question of how much is really changingthe point that I made a moment ago in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Jeremy Wright). The creation of a new child maintenance and enforcement commission sounds like a brave new departure in this important area. A new body, a new location, a new team, new systems to improve on what we had beforea completely fresh approach to the service that will change the frustrations of the past few years. I have no doubt that that is what people will be expecting from this Government and this Bill, but if I am not mistaken, that is not necessarily what is happening.
	It appears that the organisational side of the Bill involves unscrewing the CSA name-plate from the front of its building and replacing it with one saying Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission. The Government are pretty good at changing name-plates. We have not forgotten the 600 bill for replacing the name-plate of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister with one saying, Deputy Prime Minister's Office. Of course, inside the new agency's building, there will be the same team of people in the same offices using the same computer systemthe one that has caused the Government so many headaches over the past few years.
	Perhaps the Minister will be able to tell us in his winding-up speech what is being done internally to ensure that this is much more than just a re-branding exercise for the CSA. What is actually being done to ensure a real culture change within the organisation? Are the Government really planning to maintain the same internal systems, or will they need to spend yet more large sums of taxpayers' money on yet another new computer system? And why is it taking so long for the transition to the new system to take place? The new approach, we understand, will not be fully operational until 2013most of the way through the next Parliament. Why is the change to a system in which assessments are based on information from Revenue and Customs not being fast-tracked? After all, it will be dealing with one of the biggest sources of current frustration with the present system. If Ministers can accelerate that change, they will have our support in doing so.
	When the Bill is in Committee, my hon. Friends will want to probe the Government in detail about whether they intend that there should be support for couples seeking to enter into voluntary agreements. Many interest groups, for example, would like a formal structure whereby the new agency can provide back-up support for couples as they negotiate with each other. In particular, we expect to discuss in detail in Committee whether the new agency should be able to offer to women information about the income levels of their former husbands or partners, in order to help inform those voluntary agreements. Given that these negotiations will be taking place at a very emotional, sensitive and difficult time for those involved, it is absolutely right that the Committee look carefully at the level of support given to those embarking on the task of reaching a voluntary agreement.
	Likewise, there is an issue about how equipped the voluntary sector will be to cope with the advice that undoubtedly it will be asked to give. I know how hard pressed many such groups are at the moment. The citizens advice bureau in my constituency is facing more and more demands for its services, particularly with the worrying growth in consumer debt. I have no doubt that the welcome change to greater use of voluntary agreements will place an extra burden on such organisations in my constituency and around the country. What steps are the Government planning to take to ensure that the voluntary sector can cope?

Chris Grayling: My hon. Friend makes a number of important points, and we will look forward with interest to seeing what information the Government give us in Committee on that subject. This is another example of an area in which we have precious little detail about what the Government envisage for an important part of the Bill.
	At the top of that list is the question of the benefits disregard. We understand the theory of what the Government are trying to do but we will need to discuss in Committee with Ministers the potential consequences of their plansif they are prepared to provide details by then.
	I know that some see the income disregard as an essential tool to motivate parents on benefits to participate in the system and to make sure that money actually gets to the child rather than the state. It has also been seen as a way of targeting funding on children to ensure that we can lift them out of poverty. But, as the Secretary of State rightly said, there is a counter-argument, which is that the disregard could end up providing a perverse incentive to separate. Although I do not for a moment believe that money is the prime motivator for people to stay together or to separate, the harsh reality is that in some cases it does make a difference, and we should not use either our tax or our benefits system in a way that encourages family break-up.
	I am disappointed that the new Secretary of State does not have more information for the House today, and that he was not able to offer to provide the information sought by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead and myself. I appreciate that it is early days, but will he look at the issue again and come back with information as quickly as possible, as it is central to the viability, the cost and the working of the scheme? The Government are asking the House to debate the fundamentals of the Billin the Chamber today, and in Committeewithout that information. That suggests that the Government are not being as full, open and collaborative with Members as they should be, given the supposed change of tone in the Government.
	It is also important that the Committee examine in detail the issue of self-employment. We think that the previous-year assessment basis and the disregard of income changes up to 25 per cent. are logical for people in normal PAYE employment. But we need to understand how the Government intend to handle self-employment. I have lost count of the number of times that women have come to see me with the complaint that their former husband or partner is declaring a very low income to the CSA, but is self-employed and clearly hiding a much higher income; he may have a big house and a big car. The frustration of those women is clear; they say, I know he's better off than he says. He's telling the CSA that he's only earning 17,000, and the CSA says it will take his word for it. That is obviously wrong and unfair.
	The Secretary of State will know that while it is difficult to dodge factual information within the conventional PAYE system, there is greater flexibility for self-employed individuals to avoid the full force of the system. Will the Government explain in Committee in more detail how they intend to address the issue and tackle the potential problems that self-employment can create?
	The one part of the Bill that is long on detail is the section about enforcement. I am all in favour of strong enforcement. Too many men have been able to get away without meeting payments, knowing that there is little prospect of real enforcement. The message that this sends beyond the families is potentially damaging as well. Fatherhood is, and should always be, a big personal obligation. One of the reasons for the original establishment of the Child Support Agency was to ensure that fathers lived up to their obligations, and that they understood that there was an organisation that would ensure that they could not walk away from those obligations, leaving mothers and children dependent on benefits.
	That was not just for fathers at the end of a relationship, but for those who never really got into the relationship in the first place and regarded fatherhood as something transitory. Sadly, that does happen in our society. We still get high-profile cases that undermine confidence. Last year the  Metro newspaper reported the case of a 21-year-old, Keith Macdonald, who had already fathered seven children with seven different women, running up a benefit cost of an estimated million pounds a year. Cases like that make the need for a range of sanctions to deal with the issues contained in the Bill desirable and necessary, and we support that principle.
	There are issues about enforcement and the curfews. How does one enforce a curfew? The idea of withdrawing passports is a good one, but it worries me that the one bit of the Bill about which we have detailin contrast with the other areas that we have addressed today, where there is precious little detailis enforcement. This comes from a Government who have dined out on spin for the last decade. It is noticeable that the detail is all about things that might make a headline in the newspapers, while the important detail remains unresolved. Too many questions remain unansweredwhich would of course be in no way typical of what we have experienced for the past decade under the Government. I hope that the new Secretary of State will be able to do things a little better.
	I have no doubt that change is necessary. Too many women in my own constituency, and millions around the country, have been left stranded by the incompetence of the CSA in the past few years and by the Government's failure to get to grips with the problem. It is not just the women. Men, too, have found themselves caught up in the failings of the agency; not knowing quite where they stand or what they have to pay. When Ministers spend 500 million of taxpayers' money and the NAO says that things have got no better, they really have cause to be ashamed.

Chris Grayling: I can assure the right hon. Gentleman and the Secretary of State that we have no intention of dividing the House this afternoon. The principles behind the Bill are worth while and it deserves to go into committee. The right hon. Gentleman, my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs. Miller) and I will have many questions to put to Ministers as the Bill goes through the House. But we all hope that this time, they have got it right, and that the change can make a difference so that in future, mothers and fathers will be able to resolve their affairs through a system that is fair, transparent and effective, and that those who step outside the rules will face proper sanctions.
	The truth is that the Bill is short on detail. The changes to be made may be the ones that are needed, but too many questions remain unanswered. A lot of work needs to be done in Committee; the Government still have a lot to do. This time, they cannot afford to get it wrong. Too much rides on the Bill: the financial well-being of women around the country, and a fair deal for the menbut above all, the interests of the children, the innocent victims of relationships gone wrong. For their interests, more than any others, the Bill and the Government need to get it right.

Frank Field: I wish to emphasise the importance of the point that my hon. Friend makes. In the past 10 years, we have had two big experiments, one of which was tax credits, which were sparkly and new, and taken into a different Department. However, a fair amount of chaos resulted and continues to result. Another benefit called pension credit was run by the DWP and on the old IT system and with the existing staff, but I have never had a complaint about it. While it sounds good to say that we should have a spanking new system, there can be dangers in starting from scratch, so I agree with my hon. Friend. There is a huge amount of good will with the staff already in the system and it would be foolish to destroy that for the sake of a press release on the creation of the new agency.

Danny Alexander: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) and I want to associate myself with his remarks about mesothelioma. He has worked very hard on behalf of the disease's many sufferers and he pioneered the all-party group, so he deserves great credit for the fact that the Government have brought forward the measures in part 4 of the Bill, which my party also intends to support.
	I welcome the new Secretary of State to his position. He has made a good start over the past two days with two debates on two complicated issues. His predecessor is a hard act to follow. I welcome the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) to his position, too. We are all new in these roles. Our predecessors formed consensus when appropriate, but their exchanges were robust when that was appropriate, so I hope that both elements will continue during our periods in these positions.
	I am particularly pleased that the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Plaskitt), retains his place in the ministerial team. He has been an assiduous Minister and, as he knows, I have had cause to be grateful to him in relation to a Child Support Agency case. His work in showing what can be achieved adds to the disappointment in the many cases where such progress is not made, but I am grateful to him for what he has done. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) into whose enormous shoes I step with some trepidation. His hard work and assiduousness in this portfolio means that he is a hard act for me to follow.
	There has been a particular moment of trepidation for me in relation to the debate, although it is not so much to do with the debate as with the fact that I imminently expect to receive a message that my wife is on her way to hospital to give birth to our first child, due on Saturday. If that message arrives, my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, West (John Barrett) has offered to step in to replace me.

Danny Alexander: The hon. Gentleman may have had the same experience as I haveof the most difficult cases being referred to the office in Bolton, which I believe does not take incoming calls. There may be good reasons for that. However, it adds to the sense of frustration, particularly for Members of Parliament who are pursuing cases [Interruption.] I see that the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr. Evennett) is echoing that sentiment.
	The staff cuts are taking place against a background of poor performance and uncollected arrears. Given that, the CMEC does not look like the clean break recommended by Sir David Henshaw; it seems to be much more like a rebadging of the existing operation. It will have to manage three maintenance systems simultaneously, as well as collect past arrears. I accept the Minister's good intentions, but despite them the staffing cuts mean that the new agency risks being crippled by the problems of the old one. I hope that the Minister will address that serious point in his closing remarks.
	Heroic assumptions have been made about the extent to which the Government believe that large numbers of people will shift towards making private agreements. I support the objective of making them. However, there is the context of the staff reductions and if the aspiration for a large number of new private agreements is not met, either the CMEC will be overloaded and unable to cope or huge numbers will opt out of the system, not make a private agreement and therefore have no maintenance at all. That is a serious potential backward step.
	Furthermore, the CMEC will have to process up to 600,000 benefit cases, which will automatically fall off the system next year. On top of even that, there will be an extra administrative burden if large numbers of people choose to withdraw their cases under the old system and reapply under the newand the hon. Member for Angus suggested that many would. That is the context that leaves me pessimistic.
	I come to some of the specific elements of the Bill. I have said that the Liberal Democrats support the aspiration for private arrangements. However, the Bill does not make it obvious how the Government expect large numbers of people to come to their own private arrangements. As I said, there is a risk that many will end up with no maintenance arrangement at all. Meanwhile, the Government assume that there will be an enormous decline in CMEC cases; an assumption is being made that there will be large numbers of private arrangements, and administrative costs are planned to fall by 200 million a year from the current 570 million. That would be a huge contraction in the budget. Clearly, if the reforms were successful both sides of the House would expect a reduction in the amount of money needed to run the system. However, to plan ahead to cut the budget before we have seen how the new system is performing seems to put the cart before the horseor perhaps that should be the other way round.

Danny Alexander: The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. In the current legal position, I suspect that empowering the CMEC to enforce the agreements would involve a provision in each individual agreement. However, there are plenty of solicitors around who could make such an arrangement work.
	The basis of the Government's approach to private agreements is the advice system that will be put in place. It is essential that there should be good quality advice, particularly face-to-face advice. Earlier, the Secretary of State said that he expected the CMEC to be the principal dispensary of such advice, although he said that function would not be exclusive to the new organisation. I note that in its excellent report, the Select Committee recommended a degree of separation between the CMEC and the advice function, not least because if the CMEC takes tough powers, people might be dissuaded from going to it for advice. Going to a neutral third party, such as a citizens advice bureau or another organisation of the sort mentioned by the Secretary of State, might be much better. It is important to ensure that the advice networks used for that purpose are properly funded and set up. Again, we need a clear statement from the Government about how they wish to establish such advice networks.
	There has already been a debate about the maintenance disregard. I share the Government's view that the 10 figure is too low and should be raised. I do not accept the objections to that, which have been raised in this debate. Clearly, there has to be a cap at some level and I hope that, before the Committee stage, Minister will be able to make that level clear. It has to be there to prevent abuse. However, there is also a question of timing. The current plan is that the higher disregard will not be introduced until 2011, but existing benefit claimants will be expected to reapply under the new system, or opt out with a private arrangement, in 2008. That means that the existing 10 disregard will apply in those circumstances. I am concerned that not applying the higher disregard at the same time as benefit claimants are told to reapply will result in a disincentive for those who need to reapply, because they will not feel that they will get any major financial benefit. The timings should be the same.
	The new assessment process will be based on income from the previous year. I welcome that fact that the Minister has taken on board the view that data from Revenue and Customs should be used for that purpose. That is a good start. The Liberal Democrats are of the view that that agency should also be responsible for collection, and I shall return to that point later. I hope that that point will be investigated before anything is settled on. None the less, the information will still be one or two years out of date and there will be an administrative burden of annual reassessment.
	There is also a real concern about the percentage figures that the Government are recommending in respect of fluctuations of income before a reassessment is madethey are talking about a 25 per cent. fall in income or a 25 per cent. rise. The organisation Resolution, which specialises in such matters, has pointed out an example of a case in which a 24 per cent. fall in the income of the non-resident parent could lead to a rise in the amount of maintenance that they pay from 29.2 per cent. of their income to 42.4 per cent., without, at the moment, any right of appeal.
	I hope that the Minister will consider having an asymmetric rule to ensure that the figure that would trigger reassessment would be lower for a fall than a rise. Perhaps we could be talking about cases in which the non-resident parent has a fall in income of, say, 10 per cent., but there could be discussion about the figure. Clearly, the smaller the figure, the greater the administrative burden. However, in the case of a fall in NRP income, there is a strong case for having a lower figure and therefore an asymmetric rule.
	The Government also propose to raise the minimum weekly payment in benefit cases from 5 a week to 7a 40 per cent. rise. I have some doubts about the fairness of that proposal against the general background of the low level of benefits and the upratings that we have seen in recent years. If such a change is to be introduced, it should be done only in the context of a wholesale review of the adequacy of the benefits system. We have to bear in mind that a young person on jobseeker's allowance may be on only 45 a week, so that increase could well have a substantial impact on their standard of living. I hope that the Minister can deal with that important point of detail.
	We are deeply sceptical about the proposals to allow the new agency to charge for its services. Previous powers that have been available have not been used and they should not be used now. They will be a disincentive to use the system. There may well be a case in future for charging in cases of non-compliance as an incentive for the non-compliant personusually the non-resident parentto pay. However, in the general run-of-the-mill cases, charging for the services of the CMEC sends a bad signal.
	We would prefer HMRC to be responsible for collection. The use of HMRC data raises the question of why a new agency is needed at all. HMRC already collects our taxes and has systems for making calculationsfor example, those used in tax credits. We need to know why the Government feel the need for an additional layer of bureaucracy. Why not let HMRC collect the money that absent parents should be paying for their children? That would be quicker, fairer and simpler.  [ Interruption. ] Judging from the expectoration on the Labour Benches, I think that the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd) wishes to intervene, and I am happy to give him his opportunity.

Mark Todd: One of the tests of the legislation will undoubtedly be the proportion of cases that can be dealt with outside of the state's intervention. I have found, as I am sure have other hon. Members, that the mere involvement of the state has often exacerbated the problem. The frustrations of dealing with the CSA and the antagonisms of producing detailed assessments and arguing over them make the situation worse. The further we can get the state to withdraw, except in extremis where it is required, the better it will be.

Jeremy Wright: I begin, as the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Plaskitt), re-enters the Chamber, by welcoming him to his old job this afternoon. He has been involved with the preliminary reforms of the CSA, and I am pleased that he will be able to carry forward further reform. I also want to join in the consensus that there has been across the House in agreeing that that reform was absolutely necessary, and that we could not simply proceed with the situation that we were in, with a failing agency that was not doing the job that it needed to do for a variety of families and children in our society.
	I welcome the Bill's general thrust towards encouraging more voluntary maintenance agreements. Other hon. Members have spoken on this, and it is important to say that this is the way in which we should wish to encourage parents to resolve child maintenance issues. If the state does not have to be involved, it should not be.
	It is important also that we encourage those voluntary maintenance agreements in whatever context we can. It is worth remembering that a number of parents who are separating will be in the process of forming their arrangements at or near courts. Not every separating couple find themselves at court, but many do, so it is sensible to encourage parents who are at court in any event, resolving a number of other aspects in their lives and for the future of their children, if possible to resolve also the financial aspects of child maintenance while they are in a frame of mind to discuss the future, and if possible, being represented. That is not to say that I advocate going back to the old days where all these matters were resolved by the courts; I do not advocate that, but it would be helpful for those parents already involved with the courts system to be encouraged to engage with a voluntary procedure while they are in that context.
	As the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) said, the reality is, whether we like it or not, that in the minds of many parents the issues of access and contact are inextricably bound up with those of financial support. Although it would be wrong for anyone to advocate that we should have a system in which it appeared that access or contact was being bought by financial support, it is also important to recognise that the two issues are connected in the minds of many parents. It is crucial to have a system in which we avoid a situation whereby financial support and contact are put in place in such a way that one can be used in a weapon in the battle over the other. I hope that if we move towards voluntary maintenance agreements, with flexibility in terms of how they can be implemented, we can avoid that situation in as many cases as possible.
	We in this House may say that voluntary maintenance agreements are the way forward and tell parents to get on and make them, but even with a broad measure of cross-party support, it is not as simple as that. We must recognise that in many cases there is a significant imbalance between the two parents in terms of how able they feel to negotiate, to argue their case, and to ensure that at the end of a voluntary negotiation process a fair settlement is reached which benefits the children. I entirely agree that that is our foremost priority. However, because of that potential imbalance in power, it does not necessarily follow that without some assistance parents will end up in a situation whereby the children benefit from such an agreement.
	We have heard about the need for advice and support, which is vital. With that advice and support, we can have confidence, in the vast majority of cases, that a voluntary maintenance agreement is the way forward. I very much support the thrust of the Bill in that sense. However, that advice and support should almost certainly not come, at least not directly, from the new agency, CMEC. We must have a system in which even if, as the Bill suggests, CMEC will have the responsibility of commissioning advice and support, there is some distance between it and those delivering advice and support to families. Mediation is always a better way of resolving such situations than resorting to the state through the CSA, CMEC or any other agency, or through the courts. If it can be done by voluntary agreement, it should be. It is vital that parents who are considering an agreement are not deterred from engaging in that process because they thinkthey may well be wrongthat if they were to go to CMEC, engage in an open discussion of their situation, and volunteer information as to their circumstances, CMEC would use that information against one party or another, in a more enforcement-related process, if the agreement broke down at a later date.
	That is not the same as saying that CMEC should not be there in cases where voluntary maintenance agreements broke down. However, it is vital that advice and support come not directly from CMEC but from other agencies that are more trusted in environments where they are relied upon to give impartial advice. That requires far greater involvement of the voluntary sector and many more organisations being involved in the process. Of course, they will require adequate financial support to do that job; I recognise that there will be financial implications. However, if we are to avoid the longer-term expenditure involved in agreements breaking down and CMEC becoming involved in a way that we would not wish it to, it is worth that initial expenditure.
	Let me return to the point about encouraging voluntary agreements and what CMEC can do in that regard. It is important that it should be able to support those arrangements by standing behind them. Several hon. Membersinitially my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose)made the point that there is a big difference between CMEC being enabled to enforce a voluntary agreement and enabled to take an application from square one from a family whose voluntary maintenance agreement has broken down.
	There is little incentive to engage in the voluntary maintenance agreement process for someone who thinks that all the hard work will come to nothing if the agreement breaks down. We should have a system that allows CMEC to take on part of the process whereby the agreement was reached, and provides for enforcement at least partially on that basis. Although the agreement would not remain voluntary, such a system would not only reduce CMEC's work load, and therefore its expensean eminently desirable aimbut make families more likely to engage in the voluntary agreement process.
	Voluntary agreements are not only good for the families, although that is the most important consideration, but if more separating couples reach a such an agreement, it will leave CMEC much freer to spend more time on the difficult, complex and irreconcilable cases, which require a great deal of time and effort to resolve the situation or, if necessary, to pursue errant partners who are not prepared to fulfil their financial responsibilities.
	When we consider the rest of the Bill and all the powers that CMEC can exercise, it is important to acknowledge that, as I said in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), providing the powers is only half the story. The other half is ensuring that the commission can exercise them. It needs the time, personnel and resources to exercise them, or having them in the Bill will do no family any good.
	I should be grateful for clarification of a specific point, which the Secretary of State may have covered but about which I was not clear. The Bill grants four specific powers to CMEC when a partner does not provide financial assistance and the commission cannot persuade that person to do so. At the top of the scale is imprisonment, followed by a curfew, deprivation of a driving licence and deprivation of a passport. The Bill appears to say that CMEC can make the order directly for deprivation of a passport. In the case of the other three, CMEC must go to court to obtain an order. It would be helpful if the Under-Secretary could explain the logic behind that discrepancy.
	As I said, I may have heard the Secretary of State confirm that the court should be the deciding agency for all four powers. However, if that is not the case, I should be grateful for an explanation. It gives me some cause for concern, because all four appear to be fairly significant punitive powers for the court and, in one case, the commission. I believe that they should all be exercised through a court-related process rather than directly on the commission's application and decision.
	It is entirely sensible that the new commission should have the power, when appropriate, to examine the financial circumstances of cases that have been outstanding for some time and decide that it would make sense to accept a lesser figure than the total outstanding arrears. However, I would like reassurance that, if the commission is prepared to make that sort of decision, it will not do so without involving the parent with care. It would be wrong of the commission to appear to make decisions for administrative convenience without the agreement of the parent with care, who will suffer the financial burden of the full amount not being collected. Although I acknowledge the good sense of having such a power available, I would be grateful for reassurance that, when it is used, the parent with care will be fully involved and invited to give consent to the action before it is taken.
	For all of us who have experienced many constituency cases in which the CSA has not done the job that we would wish it to doand that its staff wish that they could have donethe reason is often that, despite detailed, accurate and extensive information from the parent with care about the non-resident parent who is absent and has either disappeared off the face of the earth or been found, the latter's income is not accurately reassessed to ensure that the appropriate amounts are being paid.
	If we are all to assure our constituents that CMEC will do a better job than the CSA, we need not only to demonstrate to them that the Bill provides the new commission with more powers to do the things that they want it to, but to ensure that when they call CMEChopefully, they will be able to get through on the phoneto communicate information, which is often verified independently rather than simply on their say-so, action will be taken in response to it. The powers in the Bill must be used when constituents have provided the requisite information.
	In common with other hon. Members, I give the Bill a qualified welcome. Some matters within it need clarification. It is regrettable when, as so often, a great deal of the important nuts and bolts of legislation are dealt with through regulation after the fact. It would be helpful if we heard further detail from the Minister in Committee about how the regulations can be expected to operate. Be that as it may, and even if we can resolve all the issues relating to the wording and associated regulations, we will still want some reassurance that the mechanisms and set-up at CMEC will allow it to be rather more effective than its predecessor.

Hywel Williams: May I begin by welcoming the Front-Bench speakers to their respective posts? I have to say that because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Angus (Mr. Weir) reminded me, we are old lags in this matter, having laboured in pensions and benefits since we were elected in 2001. We have the scars on our backs to prove it.
	I welcome the Government's intention to put the Child Support Agency out of its miseryor possibly reform it yet again. That has been long expected and long hoped for. As many others have observed, the agency that was set up long ago in the 1990s had the fundamental flaw of appearing to be a benefit-recovery agency rather than a means of ensuring that parents with care had adequate incomes or, of equal importance, that non-resident parents made a proper contribution. It is right that the responsibility is shouldered by the people who should shoulder it. Unfortunately, there is still a pressing need to improve the incomes of parents with care, particularly single parents.
	Child poverty has come down, which is greatly to be welcomed. The latest figures for Wales, relating to 2004-05, show that progress has been stalledmomentarily, one hopes. According to Save the Children, about 28 per cent. of children in Wales180,000 childrenare still living in poverty. Many of those children live in single parent households or those where there has been a divorce. If we want to achieve or even better the Government's target of halving child poverty by 2010 or of eradicating it by 2020, we need to take great strides. I hope that the Bill will go some way in that direction. In that respect, I certainly wish it well.
	Every hon. Member will have their own tales of woe arising from the current arrangements. Many of mine are due to the nature of the local economy. As has already been pointed out, problems often arise when people are self-employed. The private economy of my constituency is overwhelmingly made up of self-employed sole traders or partnerships where the financial arrangements are not always very clear. To be frank, they are easily hidden.
	Some cases are very straightforwardI shall not go into the detail of all my constituency casesand some inexplicable in small communities. In one recent case, a mother asked me how it was that the fatherhe is a builderwas able to build a new house with his new partner and drive around in a new 4x4, while paying nothing off his arrears. Without the proper information, the CSA was apparently powerless to help. In another case, a father wants to migrate to the new mark 2 system, but the CSA says that he cannot. He fears that he might have to default, although in the past he has always fully co-operated with the CSA.
	One danger that must be guarded against is the new agency simply reaching for the low-hanging fruit. In the past, there has been a danger that the obvious casesthe people who co-operate and who are prepared to provide financial informationare addressed, while the classic example of the man who has run away to work on the rigs is never pursued, because it is a good deal easier to tick the box and meet the target by reaching for the low-hanging fruit instead.
	Earlier, my hon. Friend the Member for Angus and I were quietly discussing whether all the old cases would eventually migrate to the new system, or whether we would have three systems running at the same time. The latter could be a recipe not only for great difficulty but for strong feelings among those who felt disadvantaged by not being able to move to the new system.
	We have all seen extremely complicated cases, and I am slightly reluctant to go into this one, but I want to give the House an idea of the measure of complexity that can be involved. A disabled father, a constituent of mine, is unable to take his disabled son overnight because of the son's disruptive behaviour. The parents have therefore agreed that that should not happen, but the mother is on benefit, so the CSA has said that the father has to make payments. They have no choice; that is the administrative law. The father claims that he cannot afford to pay, because of a loss of income arising from his disability, and he says that he will have to give up his work. There is an element of tragedy in this case, because the parents are co-operating to the best of their ability, but this man, who has a disability but is managing to struggle on, will have to give up work.
	I do not want to go into too many cases, but another pertinent one involves the growing trend towards 50:50 shared care. How will the agency deal with such situations? Some parents will be able to organise such arrangements in an amicable way, and that is all well and good. However, there have also been a great many disputes, and they are often expressed in terms of money. We must be careful when addressing the point made by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), when he appeared to suggest that access might be linked to payments. That would be a dangerous route to travel, and we must think carefully before we head in that direction.
	I have referred to some of the problems relating to the CSA, but I do not blame the staff in any way. They have always been courteous and done their best, as far as I am concerned. I want to pay tribute to them and, in particular, to the Welsh language unit, which is based in Birkenhead. On a lighter note, I suggest that hon. Members take on Welsh-speaking case workers, because it is very easy to get through to the Welsh language unit, which provides a Rolls-Royce service. I commend that course of action to the House. On a serious note, the position of the staff in the new agency must be protected and safeguarded, because I know that the CSA has had some concerns in that regard.
	Members of the Scottish National party and I welcome the principles of the Bill, including the new responsibilities for both parentsI emphasise both. I have always been uneasy with the present arrangement in which the father's responsibility is almost always expressed in monetary terms, as though all that the father needed to do was pay the money. That has not led to good parenting in many cases, and we need to move towards encouraging good parenting by the system and by the state.
	If the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) were here now, I am sure that he would be on his feet extolling the virtues of working with parents to improve the quality of their parenting. Unfortunately, I fear that because of the way in which the system has worked we have produced a generation of children who have seen parental relationships and responsibilities reduced to vicious squabbles over money, and who might now believe that that is all that it was about. I fear that some of that process of degeneration has been fuelled by the present system, and I certainly hope that the new arrangements will be part of the solution.

Hywel Williams: I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that point, and I certainly hope that CMEC will provide an active and creative advice service, rather than one that is simply concerned with the nuts and bolts of money. Many parents live at opposite ends of the country, but there are many ways in which that can be addressed. For example, long-distance computer communication via e-mail should be considered as a means of ensuring that the relationship between the parent who does not have care and the child is maintained.
	Like other Members who have spoken, I am very much in favour of parents reaching voluntary agreements without going through CMEC. Citizens advice bureaux, Cymorth I FenywodWomen's Aid in Walesand End Child Poverty Network Cymru point out that we must take seriously the danger of non-resident fathers in particular taking the opportunity to pressure their former partners not to resort to advice and guidance from the new agency and to steer clear of CMEC. Some women might have been in abusive relationships and still be under physical and emotional pressure from their former partners. We must guard against that possible unintended consequence.
	I want advice and guidance to be available as locally as possible. Parents going through a divorce might not be in a position to travel tens or even hundreds of miles to seek advice from the agency. I represent a rural area and I am unconvinced that the matter is being taken seriously enough. Government offices have been closed in my area, and services have been moved 70 or 80 miles to towns such as Wrexham. A long-distance computer camera system is being installed in the west of my constituency to deal with the new passport system. I do not want to pursue that point, but I hope that the advice service will be provided as locally as possible.
	I am also concerned that the intention to use gross earnings for one year might not enable CMEC to take into account variations in earnings throughout the year, which can have disastrous effects on parents' incomes. Many of my constituents work in the holiday industry and make little money in the winter and quite a lot in the summer. In the past, that affected the dates when people applied for disability living allowance or attendance allowance. Ice-cream salesmen would apply for attendance allowance in February, when their incomes were low. There are also huge variations in the incomes of others who are self-employed.
	Let me briefly return to my concern about split carethe 50:50 situation that I alluded to earlierwhich can complicate otherwise straightforward arrangements. I came across one case in which people literally counted the days: they worked out how many nights the child had stayed for, and when the total came to half of 365my arithmetic does not extend that farthe parent with care changed. I do not want us to go down that route, where parents look not at the quality of care but whether distortions might cost them hundreds or thousands of pounds.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Angus is anxious that I raise a point about fee charging. The Law Society in Scotland has suggested that the ability to charge fees might be postponed until the standard of service reaches a certain level. It is saying that, if we take the view that the CSA's service has not been acceptable, let us wait and see how the new body performs before we start charging for a service that might not be fully up to standard.
	The Bill is not a perfect solution by any meansthere will never be a perfect solution in cases where parents are splitting up; there will always be problemsand I hope that it will be improved in Committee. Perhaps the arrangements already available in Scotland, which my hon. Friend mentioned earlier, can be built on. Of course, our overriding aim must be to make sure that this time the money goes to the children.
	I want to refer briefly to the mesothelioma proposals. I have some experience in this regard. Some Members might recall that the Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers' Compensation) Act 1979 was introduced because of the difficulties experienced by some of my constituents and others in the north Wales slate industry, and in the jute industry in Dundee. The previous employers had gone bankrupt or out of business, and there was literally nobody to sue. People could not sue for the compensation that they were due, and the then Government eventually stepped in and introduced the 1979 Act. I am therefore very pleased that this Government are addressing the mesothelioma issue through this Bill.
	Many of the slate workers in my constituency who were exposed to the danger of slate dust went to work in the very large Ferodo factory that opened outside Caernarvon. It was part of the Turner and Newall group, and it made brake linings out of asbestos. So some of the workers who had been exposed to slate dust went to work in a factory where asbestos was being used. I am very pleased that particular arrangements have been made in respect of Turner and Newall workersor Federal-Mogul workers, as they now are. If the hon. Member for High Peak (Tom Levitt) were here, he would doubtless want to contribute, and I pay generous tribute to his efforts on behalf of workers in his constituency and in mine. The Bill's proposals on mesothelioma are therefore very welcome.
	To end on a chilling note, mesothelioma is a dreadful disease. It is very quickpeople live for months only. Before I was elected, I went to a coroner's court with a widow for the results of a post mortem on her husband, which eventually proved that he did have slate dust. She eventually got compensationbut that, of course, was after he had died. I welcome the possibility that, under the new mesothelioma proposals, such people will very quickly get the compensation that they deserve.

John Barrett: This is a very serious debate. Many people have waited far too long to discover what is to replace the Child Support Agency. We have heard today about individual and more general cases involving the CSA from every Member who has spoken todayfrom Members in all parts of the House. We all agree that the reduction of child poverty is a key issue, but even in relatively affluent constituencies such as mine, where child poverty certainly exists in pockets, we need to provide a fair deal for those whose ex-partners have decided not to deliver on their responsibility to look after their children. Often, it is the wife who is the carer, and we must ensure that such people get a fair deal in bringing up their children.
	Tackling evasive non-resident parents, particularly self-employed non-resident parents, in respect of whom there are specific problems, is also key aspects of the Bill. The resident parentoften, it is the mothermay have worked in their ex-partner's business, particularly if it is a small business, and knows exactly what the income of her ex-partner is. When that ex-partner says that he now lives on 100 a week, receiving a very low assessment from the CSA, the resident parent will frequently say that he has bought a new car, built a new house or has a new partner, and is living fairly high on the hog. In many cases, the problem is not that the regulations are not in place, but that no action has been taking using the existing powers.
	Voluntary arrangements are to be encouraged, and communication with other Government Departments is vital. I dealt with a case of a father who was saying to the CSA that he had a very low income and could not possibly pay a reasonable amount to look after his children, while he was telling the Home Office how well-off he was because he wanted to sponsor a potential new wife who was coming into the country.
	I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Danny Alexander), who asked, Why not use Revenue and Customs to collect the money through the taxation system? HMRC is ruthless in the way in which it collects income tax, and it is collecting the money, not distributing it, that is usually the problem. If that could be covered using an existing department, it would be one way forward.
	It is easy to forget that most parents are interested in the welfare of their children, whether or not their relationship survivesbut sadly there are some who are not. People must be allowed to put a voluntary agreement in place if they can. Before I was a Member, there was a case in my constituency where a young father of two had come to a voluntary agreement with his ex-partner. He was being hounded by the CSA, and in the end, the CSA letters were found along with his documents after he had committed suicide. It is not just a question of sorting out the financial needs of families. These are often families whose entire lives are falling apart; the marriage has fallen apart, and there are financial problems and concerns about the welfare of the children.
	If the new Secretary of State can deliver a solution to the victims of the CSA, he will find agreement on both sides of the House. I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his new position, as well as Opposition spokesmen including my Front-Bench colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey.
	I intervened on the hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) to point out that the CSA spends approximately 1 for every 1.85 it collects. If ever we needed evidence of why it is time for a change, that is it. That is one of the worst ratios of any country in the world. The CSA long ago abandoned the new scheme's original targets of clearing applications within six weeks. The average clearance time now for new cases is close to six months.
	The bottom line for any system of child support is whether the money is getting to the children. In this respect the current system has an unenviable record. In 1990, under the old court system, the typical maintenance award was in the region of 20. Fifteen years later, it is 21 per week, despite a considerable rise in the costs of bringing up children.
	One issue that I shall touch on is the use of the IT system within the CSA. Some time ago, it came to my attention that the existing IT systemmuch maligned, with IT operators accepting the blame for being unable to transfer enough cases to the new systemwas being blamed as the bottleneck holding up cases. But I was informed that the IT system was not the cause of the problem, but that those dealing with it were prepared to accept the blame because they had a number of other IT contracts with the Government.
	One task for the new Secretary of State is to find out whether the IT system is really a problem, or whether EDS is well able to deliver corrections to the IT system but cannot because it has been told that the work that a smoothly running IT system would produce would require more staff. We have heard about staff cuts in the CSA. I have visited hard-working CSA staff in their offices and seen them do their best, often while being the victims of verbal abuse on the telephone. I am not blaming the staff, and I hope that in the new system, the staff get the back-up and the IT system that they deserve, and that the mothers get the money they deserve to spend on the children, whose welfare is all-important.
	There has been much talk of change and a new approach to politics this week. However, I doubt that many hon. Members will disagree with me when I say that if ever there was a policy area in which change is most urgently needed, it is the system of child support. Ten years of this Government have been accompanied by 10 years of child support chaos. We have said goodbye to a Prime Minister, but the problem of the CSA and its replacement will prove more enduring, unless the new Government take the bold steps necessary.
	In my six years in this place, I have taken part in half a dozen debates on the CSA and I have needed to trigger such debates in Westminster Hall on more than one occasion. When I looked back through  Hansard I was disappointed to see that I had to make the same arguments and raise the same concerns year after year. I would like to believe that that says less about those debates and more about the lack of action by the Government. It is a scandal that some of my constituents have had to wait for so long for the Government to take meaningful action in that area. I am also disconsolate at the thought that even if the new system that the Bill will introduce works as the Secretary of State claims it will, it will not be up and running until 2010.
	I was not in this place in 1991, but I know that there was cross-party support for the Child Support Act 1991. I would love to say that today's Bill will be given the same warm welcome across the Chamber, but I for one have several real concerns about the proposals. Other hon. Members have outlined the scale of the failure in the CSA, but it is difficult to overstate how serious the challenge is for any new system. Some 38,000 Scots are waiting for payments and some 3.5 billion in maintenance remains uncollected, with 2 billion written off as uncollectable. That is not the Government's debt to write off. Parents are due that money, and should be able to take action to recover what they can through the courts if it is written off by the Government. Less than half of the non-resident parents who made a payment in the last quarter are paying the full amount they owe and, in spite of the ongoing problems at the CSA, staff numbers have been cut.
	Until recently, Ministers were still talking about dealing with the problems in the agency and saying that they could get it on a stable footing. I am pleased that the Government have recognised that there is no use in steadying a sinking ship. While I welcome the belated decision to scrap the old agency, we must ensure that the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission is not merely a rehash of the CSA. We need real root-and-branch reform at every level, and I would contend that the jury is still out on whether that is what the Bill will provide. I echo the concerns of the National Association for Child Support Action, which rightly pointed out that if CMEC is to manage existing cases, and operate with existing CSA staff and IT systems, it is difficult to understand how it can be considered a radical departure from the old system.
	Perhaps the biggest immediate hurdle that the CSA has to overcome is the perception that it is a toothless and failing agency that is not taken seriously by parentsthe very parents who often owe substantial arrears towards the welfare of their children. The recent report by the Work and Pensions Committee stated that it was
	difficult to exaggerate the CSA's low reputation
	although some hon. Members have tried their best this afternoon. I am sure that every Member's weekly surgery appointments will demonstrate the scale of the mistrust and underline the challenge of winning the hearts and minds of parents wronged by the current system. To restore that shattered reputation, we will need far more than tinkering change. We need wholesale replacement of one of the most disastrous organisations in modern British political history.
	Other hon. Members have dealt with the fine detail of many aspects of the Bill already, so I will keep my own comments brief and focus on several areas of particular concern to my constituents. A key reason why the agency is seen as toothless is that it has placed far too little emphasis on compliance and too rarely uses middle-order steps to ensure regular payments. Currently, there is little confidence that the CSA will pursue non-compliant parents, and if maintenance is not being paid, the parent with care has to make numerous complaints. Even then, the agency may not deliver effective enforcement action. Many of us will have heard first hand from mothers about why they have had to act as detectives to prove that their ex-partners have higher incomes than have been declared. At the same time, however, the agency will often take the word of the non-paying father as gospel.
	In that regard, I am pleased that some new measures to increase collection are being introduced, such as the use of deductions from earnings. However, I caution that the problem with enforcement has had less to do with the CSA's lack of powers than with its failure to use them. I hope that the new structure will change that, but I am not convinced that the measures in the Bill will fix the problem. As I said, the jury is still out.
	The principles guiding the changes look good, but I share the concerns of those who feel that we have been given insufficient detail about how the changes will be achieved. With the best will in the world, measures such as removal of passports and driving licences will do nothing to deal with the fundamental problems that dogged the previous organisation from the start.
	We all agree that a truly child-centred policy must look beyond merely enforcing the financial obligations of non-resident parents and do much more to encourage the involvement of both parents in their children's upbringing. In that regard, I welcome the Government's recognition that there should be no barriers preventing parents from coming to their own, mutually agreeable, arrangements for child support. However, if such agreements could be reached in every case, the Government would not need to get involved in child support at all. As that is clearly not the case, I seek assurances from the Minister today that parents with care must have a clear choice to go to CMEC if that is what they want to do, without being pushed into making voluntary arrangements that are unsatisfactoryto them, or in respect of the child. In particular, I hope that the Minister will say what help and advice will be given to parents before a decision about whether to adopt a private arrangement is made. Also, if the agreement breaks down, CMEC must be ready, able and accessible, so that it can help sort the problem out.
	Various Scottish Members have mentioned the key problems that exist in Scotland. However, I think that I am the only Scottish Member here today who has not been briefed by the Law Society of Scotland on that topic, so I shall not try to repeat the details that have been given already.
	Another major problem is that the current system is clearly unable to cope with the volume and complexity of its work load, while the communication with the Inland Revenue that is crucial for accurate assessments has been very poor in the past. I am pleased that there is to be a greater role for the Revenue in that respect, but I am concerned that the workload will remain unmanageable unless the system is simplified.. Simplicity is vital if maintenance calculations are to be made quickly and reliably.
	I am pleased that the Bill recognises the problem of calculating income when the non-resident parent is self-employed, but I am yet to be convinced that the new measures will close the loopholes currently being exploited. There has been a particular problem where the ex-partner is self-employed, and it is difficult to verify profits and income independently. A case that I took up last year involved an ex-husband who said that his income was around 100 a week. The CSA calculated maintenance on that basis, but anyone who looked closely at that man's lifestyle would see that it simply could not be supported on 100 a week.
	Any basic investigation by the CSA would have discovered that, but none took place. I remain unconvinced that the measures outlined in this Bill will put a stop to fathers avoiding supporting their children by using clever accounting techniques. It is therefore vital that information-gathering powers for the new organisation are improved, so that access to information held by other arms of Government and other organisations, such as banks and credit agencies, can be made easier.
	Like other hon. Members, I am concerned about the problems that any new handover will bring. We are still waiting for some old cases to transfer to the current system, which presents us with the ridiculous prospect that when the new system is launched, three entirely different child support systems could be in operation at the same time. Like other Members, I seek assurances from the Minister that that will not happen.
	The 2006 National Audit Office report said:
	The Child Support Reforms have failed to deliver the improvements in customer service and administrative efficiency, which might have been expected from the much-needed new rules.
	There is much still to be done to ensure that we shall not be saying precisely the same thing about this Bill in the years to come.

Maria Miller: We have, I fear, heard from Members on both sides of the House a catalogue of concern caused by the Government's failure after 10 years in power to put in place a child maintenance system that works. A total of 1.4 million families are caught in the current failing system; it costs 465 million a year to run the Child Support Agency, yet fewer than one in three eligible families receive any payment at all. Outstanding debt of 3.5 billion continues to mount by 20 million every month. Some of the comments we have heard this afternoon highlighted the results of those failures.
	The hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) identified a number of points, especially the cost of recovery of child support, on which he talked in some detail. He also noted the aspects of the Bill about which he hopes to hear more in Committee; for example, the importance of private agreements in driving the culture of change that the Government have talked about. He shares my hope that more detail about that element will be forthcoming in Committee.
	I want to touch on some of the hon. Gentleman's points about mesothelioma, although I shall refer to the subject later in my speech. He spoke with great passion about the tragic situation faced by mesothelioma sufferers and the magnitude of the problems of exposure to asbestos and the resulting illnesses. He stressed the importance of the Bill's provisions on changes to payments and of the need to ensure that they are made quickly in such cases. The House should pay tribute to the tremendous work he does in the all-party group on the issue.
	Other contributions picked up on elements that we shall debate with the Minister in more detail in Committee. I welcome the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Danny Alexander) to his new post, and hope that I pronounced the name of his constituency correctly. On behalf of my party, I send our best wishes to him and his wife on their impending new arrival.
	The hon. Gentleman highlighted the importance of collecting arrears and noted the lack of any mention in the Secretary of State's speech of the priority it will be given under the new system. We, too, are concerned about the subject, because collecting arrears is of great import to parents already trapped in the system, so we hope that we can call on the hon. Gentleman's support in Committee for amendments to ensure that parents with care are fully involved in any write-off and that no unilateral decisions on those issues are taken by the Government. I look forward to the hon. Gentleman's support.
	The hon. Gentleman referred to the differences between the Scottish and English systems. He and his colleagues will obviously have much to add on that subject and I look forward to hearing more of his thoughts in Committee. He made a rather more controversial point when he expressed his party's view that the collection and passing on of maintenance might be carried out not by the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission, but by Her Majesty's Customs and Revenue. That may be a somewhat ambitious role for HMRC, given some of its current problems, but we look forward to hearing more about how the hon. Gentleman would make that proposal work in an amendment.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr. Evennett) talked eloquently about the problems faced by his constituents, particularly as a result of the increase of non-compliance, which has caused him much concern. He works hard on behalf of his constituents to help to alleviate those problems. He also expressed concern about the continuing failure of the existing system and pointed out that assessments do not reflect the reality of people's individual arrangements. That is an important point, given the fact that the Government intend to push forward changes in enforcement before they make changes in the assessment procedure. When the Minister winds up, will he allay my concerns and explain how the two issues could be better linked? By making changes in enforcement before there are changes in assessment, he could cause further problems for people who may not have received an accurate assessment in the first place. Perhaps he could allay our fears by talking about the current system's level of accuracy. My hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford said that the devil is in the detail and he was absolutely right; all of us should have that attitude in Committee.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Jeremy Wright), who also made a good contribution, talked about the role of courts and mediation, which no other Member touched on. He mentioned the importance of ensuring that financial support is not used as a weapon to stop contact between parents and their children. My hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) discussed the importance of ongoing contact and the enduring responsibilities of parenthood. Again, I hope that we can discuss such issues in more detail.
	The hon. Member for Caernarfon (Hywel Williams) spoke well about the importance of the Bill in reducing poverty and the problems of assessing the self-employed; I look forward to hearing more of his thoughts in Committee. The hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (John Barrett) also mentioned assessment problems for the self-employed; perhaps the Minister will pick the issue up in his closing remarks. Under the current system, the self-employed could be reassessed if their income varied by plus or minus 25 per cent.; there could regularly be such changes in the incomes of the self-employed, particularly for those in seasonal occupations in the holiday industry, which has been mentioned.
	In opening the debate, the Secretary of State said that the Bill would provide a more effective and efficient system. I am sorry, but hon. Members could be forgiven for feeling that they had heard such promises before. Almost exactly eight years ago, the then Secretary of State for Social Security, now Chancellor, introduced the 1999 Child Support Agency White Paper. He said:
	We are putting the confidence back into child support, replacing complexity with simplicity, replacing delay with quick and accurate decisions, and replacing bureaucracy with a high-quality customer service...We are delivering for children and putting their needs first.[ Official Report, 1 July 1999; Vol. 334, c. 435.]
	Those are fine words, but we are here today because of the failure of that set of Government reforms. The system was so flawed that at the moment more than one in three non-resident parents simply do not bother to pay their maintenance. The computer system that was developed still does not work properly; indeed, in the past 12 months, there has been a doubling in the number of maintenance cases that have to be dealt with manually, because the computer system simply cannot cope. Eight years on, 750,000 cases are still on the Child Support Agency system. There are more cases on the old system than on the new scheme.
	A number of hon. Members have referred to the National Audit Office's damning indictment of the Government and the fact that despite 539 million of investment, nothing has improved the Child Support Agency's performance. The Secretary of State's predecessor, the right hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (Mr. Hutton), said that the new proposals before the House today were a fundamental redesign; the Secretary of State himself said that the new proposals were driving a change in culture. The reform has certainly been presented as radical, but when we read the Bill, we see that the similarities are greater than the differences. If there is a fundamental redesign, it is not in the Bill. Sir David Henshaw, commissioned by the Government to put forward a vision for the future of child support, said that
	the Child Support Agency as it stands is not capable of the radical shift in business model, culture and efficiency...A new organisation should be set up.
	He went on to say that a redesign of the system
	must not be contaminated with previous failings.
	Why are the Government not listening to what Sir David Henshaw talked about in his recommendations? Henshaw raised many issues that the Government have failed to cover in any detail in the Bill.
	The Government's position on reform has been somewhat uncertain in recent years and perhaps that is why we feel that the lack of detail in the Bill is so concerning. The Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Plaskitt), as recently as January 2006, rejected the idea of simply shutting the Child Support Agency down. He said:
	Simply scrapping it or closing it down might look attractive in terms of dealing with some of its problems, but it would only create another heap of problems that someone else would have to pick up. It is, in fact, a simplistic solution to suggest that the only thing to do is shut it down.[ Official Report, 9 January 2006; Vol. 441, c. 10.]
	The right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett)the Secretary of State before lastrequested a plan for the wholesale redesign of the present system, which was put forward by the chief executive. That was then scrapped by the right hon. Member for Barrow and Furnessthe next Secretary of Stateand Sir David Henshaw was brought in. Now the Government are advocating a move towards more voluntary agreements, although there is precious little detail in the Bill. That idea was roundly rejected by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field)who made some excellent contributions to the debate earlierwhen he was Minister for Welfare Reform. So, a lot of contrary views have been expressed.
	We want to see more detail in the Bill so that the culture change that has been talked about will be driven through and have results for families and children in all our constituencies. We fear that the Bill is too simplistic. Far more detail needs to be woven in in Committee to ensure that parents are supported to take responsibility for their child's maintenance. It is clear from the debate today that the Government cannot let this be yet another missed opportunity to establish a maintenance system that works, and we will work with them to ensure that that does not happen.
	Child maintenance is a critical factor in supporting child welfare and we have no option but to get our child maintenance system right. Each and every year, between 150,000 and 200,000 couples with children separate. Indeed, 15 per cent. of children never live with both their parents and more than 1 million children in lone parent households live in poverty. Effective maintenance is crucial and we will do all we can to support the Bill to be better at providing an effective maintenance structure.
	Members have already talked about the importance of the Bill in terms of alleviating child poverty. My hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford cited Lisa Harker's report, which pointed out that 42 per cent. of children in poverty are living in lone parent families and that maintenance ought to play a much greater role in reducing child poverty. However, as I am sure the Minister is aware, under the present system just one in five lone parents receives maintenance payments. The Secretary of State himself pointed out that child maintenance makes a paltry contribution to reducing child poverty in this country. That is in contrast to other countriesnot just countries in northern Europe, but Austria and Switzerland as well.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell said that this is not a time to sit back and bask in consensus. Although we welcome the Government's proposals to put in place some more building blocks to improve the current system, we believe that we need to move further. We support parents taking responsibility. We welcome the decision to scrap the CSA, but we need to make sure that the new organisation is not contaminated by previous failure. We welcome the innovative idea of CMEC being a commissioner of services, but we need to see the flesh on the bones of that idea and that detail is not currently in the Bill.
	We welcome the move to a more robust form of assessment, based on previous years' income and using HMRC data, but the transition to the new system for those suffering as a result of the current chaos is just too slow. Why cannot we fast-track the change in assessment, as my hon. Friend suggested? We also agree that effective enforcement is an important part of creating a new culture, but if faith is truly to be restored in the child maintenance system, we need to make sure that enforcement goes hand in hand with a more reliable and accurate assessment system.
	The Bill contains precious little detail on many of the areas that hon. Members have raised today. In Committee, we will press for more detail from the Government. It is important that we do not just wait for regulations to come through. For example, we need more detail about how we will support private agreements to be more effective, rather than just one-week wonders. Such concern has been raised by not only Conservative Members, but the Work and Pensions Committee, the National Council for One Parent Families and the Child Poverty Action Group. I hope that the Minister will take the point seriously and give us his considered and detailed views in Committee on how such agreements will work.
	The repeal of section 6 of the Child Support Act 1991 will mean that it will no longer be mandatory for those on benefits to apply to the CSA. As other hon. Members have asked, is there a need to link the repeal of the section to ensuring that additional information and support will be available for families so that they can make their own private agreements? Without such a link and a change to the level of disregard prior to the repeal, some families might fall through the child maintenance net, so will the Minister reassure us on that matter?
	At the heart of the Bill is the Government's desire for parents to take more responsibility. Will that principle extend to the recovery of arrears? The Government are sidestepping in the Bill the question of charging fees for making agreements. In Committee, we will need to hear about how that will be handled.
	All these matters cannot be left to regulations, so we will need a full debate on them in Committee. I hope that the Government will come forward with draft regulations or amendments to the Bill before that stage.
	The provisions that will change the way in which mesothelioma will be dealt with are the other important element of the Bill. There is no cure for that cruel and distressing disease, about which the hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone spoke in depth. We will be pressing the Government for more details on their intentions because, as is the case for so much of the Bill, a great deal will be laid down in regulations. Again, we hope that the Government will publish draft regulations so that we can discuss them in detail in Committee.
	There is much work to be done in Committee to take the Bill forward so that it brings about the culture change that is needed to ensure that children in this country receive the support that they need from their parents throughout childhood. As my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell said, the family is created when the child is born. Whatever happens to the relationship between parents, their family responsibilities persist. The Bill needs to support families to take responsibility for giving children the support that they need throughout their childhood to help to ensure that they get the start in life that they deserve.

James Plaskitt: We have had a thoughtful debateI am inclined to say that it was something of a specialist debateduring which the Bill has received broad general support from hon. Members on both sides of the House, which I welcome. The Government accept that we have come to the end of a road on which we all embarked in 1990 with the White Paper that heralded the introduction of the Child Support Agency. The agency was brought into being because of the failures of the previous court-based arrangements. It is worth remembering that the White Paper referred to that court system as
	fragmented, uncertain in its results, slow and ineffective.
	It continued:
	In a great many instances, the maintenance awarded is not paid or the payments fall into arrears.
	Since then, successive Governments have tried to tackle the issue of securing child maintenance via the CSA. As we all know, there were valid reasons for embarking on such a route in the first place. There have been valiant attempts to try to make the system work. However, we have come to the view that the system is fundamentally flawed. Despite the fact that billions of pounds in maintenance have been collected by the CSA, and despite the fact that more than 650,000 children are currently being supported with maintenance payments as a result of the CSA, confidence in the agency has been lost. That is why we came to the conclusion that a new approach was necessary.
	The main lesson learned by all of us is that the CSA approach was just too complex. The agency was being asked to do too much: it was asked to be the calculator, the adjudicator, the administrator and the enforcer. Indeed, as the National Audit Office concluded in 2006:
	With hindsight, the Agency was never structured in a way that would enable the policy to be delivered cost effectively.
	Since taking the decision in 2006 to make a fresh start, we have moved quickly. We have been strongly supported by the staff in the existing agency who, above all else, want to be part of a successful child support system.
	The new start envisaged by the Bill has today been widely welcomed by Members across the House, and by virtually all the stakeholders who have commented on the proposals so far. I cannot improve on the observations of the Child Poverty Action Group, which said:
	the Bill provides an important opportunity to improve the lives of children and families.
	That is exactly so.
	I turn to the main points raised in this afternoon's debate. To begin with the issues raised by the Opposition Front Benchers, the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) rightly spoke of the frustration felt by many parents with care, and indeed by some non-resident parents, as a result of the problems with the agency. I was pleased that he moved on to say that the Conservatives share our aspirations for the Bill. He said that, at the moment, it is too easy for too many parents to evade their responsibilities, but that is why the Bill envisages significant new enforcement powers. The hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs. Miller) asked about those powers, which are very important. There are new powers to give us means of accessing accounts, powers relating to financial institutions, powers to notify credit reference agenciesthat can have a significant impact, particularly on self-employed peopleand, of course, powers giving access to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs income records. All of those measures will help us to prevent people from evading their responsibilities.
	It was disappointing when the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell tried to suggest that there had been 10 years of neglect, and that disappointment was made obvious by other Members who spoke. There was, of course, a programme of improvements in 2000, which was implemented in 2003, and which the Conservative Front Benchers of the time supported. More recently, we introduced the operational improvement plan, which, again, was welcomed by the Opposition Front Benchers. It has been in operation for only a year, but already 58,000 more children receive maintenance payments, and the backlog of uncleared cases is down by 80,000 since we got going with the plan. It is not the case that there has been 10 years of no effort to try to make the agency work better.
	The hon. Gentleman asked what was different about the envisaged reform. He said that the transfer of the same staff implied that there would not be any difference. That is unreasonable to the staff, who cannot be blamed for the systemic failures in the agency's design and who want to be part of a successful operation. Indeed, it is important to retain their expertise so that they can help us as we go forward with the new operation. He wanted to know about the IT system. A number of fixes are being rolled out right now, and it is important to get that right before the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission assumes all its responsibilities. He wondered why the process was taking some time, but of course we are taking time to ensure that we get it right this time.
	The hon. Gentleman overlooked other measures included in the proposal that show just how different the new system is. I have already spoken about the new powers; we are also introducing new support for voluntary agreements and repealing section 6 of the Child Support Act 1991, which has forced so many people who did not need to use the agency into contact with it. There is a new information platform that we can work from, which includes data-sharing with HMRC, and there will be a wider use of disregard. Those are all fundamental changes.
	The hon. Gentleman asked about the role of the voluntary sector, which indeed has an extremely important part to play in helping us deliver the reforms. We are in discussion with the voluntary sector about the evolution of the support and advice services, which will be an important part of the new arrangements.
	The hon. Gentleman complained about the lack of detail at this stage, but if we have learned anything from the experience of the CSA, surely it is the importance of getting the detail right. He will understand that the Bill puts in place the basic architecture. It is crucial in many respects that the commission is allowed to evolve particular ways of doing things in the light of the duties with which it will be charged under the Bill. That is the right way to go, as opposed to the more micro-managed and overly complex approach which bedevilled the agency. We must learn the lessons from the agency. Regulations will be rolled out over 2008 to 2010 before the CMEC becomes fully operational.

James Plaskitt: As my hon. Friend knows, we have already published staff numbers through to 2008 as part of the Department's existing commitments. Staff will transfer to the new commission with protection under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 1981. Neither we nor they can at this point make firm commitments about staffing levels beyond that.
	I was disappointed to see that the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey is still clinging to his party's proposal that we hand the whole operation over to HMRC. I welcome him to his posthe has had two years as the understudy, and he now has the opportunity to revise the policy. He does not have to be committed to it any longer. I hope that he will think again about handing the whole operation over to HMRC. There are important reasons why that would not be the appropriate route and he knows that that is my and the Government's view. He should bear in mind that in those systems where the child maintenance collection arrangements are operated by the equivalent of HMRC, the system is underwritten at the same time. I have never heard him propose that. I hope that he will have the opportunity now that he is top man on this to have another think about that aspect of Liberal Democrat policy.
	I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman welcomed powers of increased enforcement, because that is something of a contrast to what some of his Liberal Democrat predecessors have said. They expressed concerns about human rights in respect of previously existing enforcement powers.
	We have also had five very thoughtful speeches from Back-Benchers. My hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) welcomed the Bill and he spoke extremely forcefully and effectively and from great knowledge about the mesothelioma clauses in the Bill, and I pay tribute to his work and the campaign that he has mounted on the issue, which is in part why the Government are having to respond and make these welcome changes in respect of sufferers from that terrible disease.
	I am pleased to note that the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr. Evennett) welcomed the improvements. He rightly acknowledged that there are still too many failures in the existing system from which many of our constituents are suffering. He welcomed the income disregards and the greater emphasis that will be placed on private arrangements. I appreciate his comments.
	We heard a thoughtful contribution from my neighbour, the hon. Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Jeremy Wright), who wanted more voluntary agreements and rightly pointed out that at the same time we have to safeguard children's interests. He said that separating parents need advice and supportas he knows, we are taking measures in the Bill to ensure that that happensand rightly observed that that advice and support needs to be held at arm's length from the state. He will see, as these services evolve, that that is very much in accordance with our thinking.
	The hon. Gentleman also raised the apparent difference between our approach to orders in respect of passports and to those in respect of driving licences, and suggested that there was an inconsistency. In fact, there are good reasons for doing it in different ways. Removing a driving licence, which we already have powers to do via the courts, has a direct impact on the livelihood of the person concerned, potentially on their employment and certainly on their mobility. Those significant consequences, bearing heavily on day-to-day life, make it legitimate to seek that power through the courts. The removal of travel documents relates rather more to discretionary activitythe drive to go on holiday, for exampleand it is appropriate that such powers can be handled administratively.

Tim Loughton: My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I shall deal with that in a minute. The BME community, and certain parts of it, seem to be affected disproportionately by the Bill's provisions on compulsory treatment, so we need more research to understand that and see how it can be overcome.
	We believe that the criteria for renewing a sectioning order should be no less rigorous than the Bill's criteria on the initial issuing of an orderit is as important for a patient as the initial detention. We therefore welcome the amendments proposing that two clinicians be involved in a patient's treatment. We are still concerned, however, about the medical expertise of the professionals issuing renewals notices. As we said in Committee and on Report, we do not want to introduce some form of hierarchy, but we do not understand why the Government have introduced inconsistencies between the original section and the renewal, and the renewal and the provisions of the Mental Capacity Act 2005. Those inconsistencies could give rise to future problems.
	We have another concern about these amendments. Which of the professionals now tasked with providing the renewal order do the Government envisage will give the objective medical expertise on mental disorder that has been determined by the European Court of Human Rights? The Minister will know that we have serious qualms about how the legislation as previously framed, and even as amended by the Lords amendments, will fare under ECHR legislation.
	We are also concerned about the fact that the primary professional now responsible could get his or her colleague in the multidisciplinary team simply to rubber-stamp the decision on a renewal of detention. We need to ensure that the second person reaches a separate and independent decision. I would like some further clarification, and guarantees from the Minister that that is what the Government envisage. Without that, the role of the second professional, and the assurances provided by having a second professional as part of the process, are rather worthless. There must be a proper, independent and rigorous check.
	I turn to community treatment orders and the amendments tabled in the name of Lord Patel of Bradford in another place, which are supported by my colleague the noble Lord Howe and Cross Benchers and Liberal Democrats. We welcome the changes that were made on Report to CTOs. We have never been against the principle of CTOs, but because they are very powerful devices, we want them to be applied to a closely defined group of personsreal revolving-door patientsin closely defined circumstances as laid down by the pre-legislative scrutiny committee, of which I was a member.
	We were therefore particularly keen on and welcomed the change to proposed new section 17 B (3)(e), which the Minister will have at the tip of his tongue. It added a very coercive measure to the exercise of CTOs:
	a condition that the patient abstain from particular conduct.
	That gave rise to CTOs being dubbed psychiatric ASBOs. The Government dropped that, which was welcome. The new condition is that CTOs must relate to what is necessary for beneficial medical treatment, but what constitutes medical treatment is still a broad definition within the Bill. It is also a shame that an end-date was not set on CTOs. Why does the Minister still not think that appropriate? We should consider the lobster-pot scenario that Professor Genevra Richardson described many years ago in her expert committee. We can easily see how people can now be subject to CTOs and other parts of sectioning. It is difficult to see how they can get out of that system, which is why we propose a three-year cap on the operation of the initial CTOs, and a right of appeal against the conditions attached to them.
	If a CTO involves giving treatment that is harmful to a patientfor example, a drug that has severe side-effects on that patient, and which he would prefer not to takein whose interests are we actually acting? I should be grateful if the Minister commented on that. In the debate in the Lords on Monday, his colleague Lord Hunt acknowledged
	concerns that supervised community treatment could be used too readily and that it could be used as a failsafe option without true justification.[ Official Report, House of Lords, 2 July 2007; Vol. 693, c. 843.]
	Lord Patel went on to say that CTOs could even become part of the normal discharge process that detains patients generally, as a kind of safety net for risk-averse mental health service staff and managers. As my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell) said, that might apply disproportionately to members of the black and minority ethnic community. The early experience in Scotland has certainly been that a much larger number of people have been put on CTOs than was originally envisaged. Of course, that also has great resourcing implications. A lot of finances will have to go into resourcing CTOs, which will surely be to the disbenefit of other parts of the mental health service. I would like some guarantees that, under the amendments, the Minister does not think that CTOs will gobble up a disproportionate part of the resources, causing problems elsewhere.
	The Government originally introduced CTOs to deal with revolving-door patients, and we would like further clarification as to how the amendments apply to such patients, because there is some woolly terminology. The amendment refers to having to take account not only of the patient's history of mental disorder, but of any other relevant factors. What does that mean? What situations will be considered? For example, if a person had been a voluntary patient, as well as being under compulsion, would that be considered? What exactly in the patient's history of mental illness are the Government going to take into account under the amendment? We, and the Government, support the amendment, but it is not nearly as detailed and specific, or as prescriptive, as the amendments that the Lords put into the Bill, which the Government took out and we tried to restore on Report.
	If the purpose of CTOs, even with the amendment, is no more than to get a patient to take his medication, we are saying that medication should be forced on a patient even if it is doing him no good and even if it may lead to harm. That brings into question the whole attitude of Ministers: that CTOs have to be with the agreement of the patient. If the patients are agreeing to treatment, why do we need compulsory treatment orders in the first place? That is a clear anomaly. I would like some assurance that the code of practice, perhaps, will be clear as to the ultimate purpose of a CTO and that compulsory medication should not be used as a substitute for adequate mental health care in the community. We need some assurance that the code of practice will work as it relates to the amendments.
	Finally, we welcome the progress that has been made with the amendments, but we still do not think that they have gone far enough. This is a great missed opportunity in many respects to have a Bill that could serious challenge the problem of stigma. In the not too distant future, when we are in government and in a position to look at mental health legislation, we will want to review some of the provisions of this Bill. I hope that the Minister will give an undertaking to review some of these radical and innovativebut unproven and untriedmeasures, particularly regarding CTOs and the impact they are having, particularly on the BME community and some of our most vulnerable patients. If he does not review it, we certainly will want to and we shall monitor this legislation closely. We want to be sure that, after eight years in gestation, the Bill works for the benefit of vulnerable people.

John Pugh: In considering the passage of this BillLords, Commons, Commons, LordsI am reminded of the nice cop, nasty cop routine. Their lordships savaged the Bill menacingly, and this House sought collectively to cajole the Government to mend their ways. In part, I think they did. Genuinely, it has not been a bad double act. The Bill has been improved, although not to universal satisfaction. I have referred to the remarks made by Baroness Murphy and Lord Alderdice in Lords, which were full of dark foreboding, largely about the use to which psychiatrists might put the Bill. I have suggested that the Bill could be called the Mental Health (Fear of Psychiatrists) Bill.
	With that in mind, we would do well to accept the Lords amendments, particularly relating to the powers of the responsible clinicians, the exceptions and the additional conditions on CTOs. With regard to the exceptions, I pointed out on Report that it was restrictive, as the Government have said, but innocuous, judging by international comparisons and the way the law pans out elsewhere. However, it also sends out powerful signals about cultural, religious and social sensitivity. Some of the same effect could also be achieved, if people wished, by a statement of principles.
	Baroness Barker's excellent amendment produces a kind of cross between those two solutions. It was Lord Hunt who called the attempt declaratory, and declaration has a place in legislation. It is a good amendment and sends important signals.
	Lord Patel's amendments are more genuinely substantive and equally welcome. The residual question is whether enough has been done to allay the fears of Lord Patel, Lord Alderdice and Baroness Murphy, which were expressed by Lord Patel when he asked how we can be assured that this legislation will not massively increase the legal coercion of psychiatric patients. When the Government have been pressed on the question of whether more people will be under coercion as a result of this legislation, they have been shy of saying that no more people will be affected.
	Our question now is whether we should do more, without going so far as to frustrate the objectives of the Act. I do not know whether we can, or whether, if we are tempted to do that, we could deliver it politically. The legislation has been improved by forensic criticism on one side, and by a listening Minister. I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Doncaster, Central (Ms Winterton), who as a Health Minister played a conspicuous part in seeing this legislation through.
	It would have been good if the other place, notwithstanding their disappointments and amid their lordly back-slapping, had recognised that the House of Commons has played some part in making progress on this legislation. For example, Baroness Barker said:
	Some of the debates in another place were disappointing in that they were conducted by people who had clearly forgotten some of the many abuses in the mental health services in this country, where there are still people who were subjected in the past to wrongful application of compulsory mental health treatment. I meet some of them in the course of my work...although they are now very old.[ Official Report, House of Lords, 2 July 2007; Vol. 693, c. 816.]
	I do not think that she was talking about events since the 1983 Act orI hopeabout events consequent on its amendment here. Only time and a serious reviewwhich we badly needwill tell. It seems to me that though the business today will be concluded, it is, as the Minister has implied, far from finished.

Tim Boswell: Like other hon. Members who have spoken, I commend the amendments to the House, although I do so without total and unqualified approval. It would be churlish to fail to acknowledge my delight that the Minister has come among us to discuss this important subject. He has been very involved in health matters, and only 24 hours ago he and I were in the same room together discussing them. He will bring a sensitive touch to the issue, by which I mean no disrespect to his colleague who carried the brunt of the consideration of the Bill in Committee.
	I wish briefly to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) on his huge contribution and to those professionals from the Mental Health Alliance and other organisations who briefed those of us who do not claim to be experts on this issue. We should not be cynical about legislation, because we have made some genuine progress here. The issue is whether we have made enough progress.
	I come to the Bill not as an expert in mental health issuesalthough I have a real interest in thembut because of my general interest in some of the issues of rights it involves. Indeed, through a member of my family, this is something of a family trade, and I was also involved in the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and the development of such concepts. One tries to test them, but my judgment is that, as my hon. Friend implied, with this legislation we have squeezed the lemon as far as we can. There may be another lemon to squeeze before long, when my hon. Friend is the Minister, butremembering the treaty of Versaillesthere may be some gloves to leave on the table in the way of concerns about the human rights implications of the Bill.
	Those are, first, in terms of the best interests of the individual, to use a phrase from the Mental Capacity Act, and concerns about whether that principle has always been enacted, especially when an individual does not have impaired decision making and is, in effect, being subjected to compulsory treatment against their will. I still have some major concerns about that, as does my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham.
	Equally, or even more importantly, the Committee expressed real concern about the differential impact on black and minority ethnic communities. That has to be tackled; whatever the legislation says, it is not acceptable in practice. The Minister's commitment to a diversity amendment is helpful in that regard, and deserves to be singled out.
	We are now at the small-print stage of our scrutiny. That is quite proper, as I believe that legislation should be considered in detail, but we must not overlook the big picture. Legislation is part of that, but it is also about delivering services effectively. No single amendment at this stage would make a huge difference in that respect. All of us who were involved in the Committee know that mental health provision in this country remains poor. It is still a Cinderella service: I must choose my words carefully but, at least in relation to other priorities, it is inadequately resourced. We need to give it a better emphasis, which means that we must establish the right sort of legal regime.
	Gradually, we have edged our way to a structure that does not challenge the rights of the individual in most cases. We have softened some of the Bill's rough edges, and although it has taken eight years, the process has been worthwhile. We can let the Bill go forward, in the belief that it will be enacted and implemented in the most sensitive way possible. No longer will we be able to make assumptions about people who are mentally ill, let alone give the impression that we are consigning them to a lifelong sentence of compulsory control and stigma.

James Duddridge: That is true, but we managed to crank up the old car so that we could move forward again as we approached the end of the Bill's passage through the House.
	I welcome the Government's latest concessions, and I was especially pleased with earlier amendments on electro-convulsive therapy and age-appropriate treatment. It was with some sadness that I must relate that this is the only one of all the debates that we have had for which I did not receive a briefing from the Mental Health Alliance, which has otherwise given fantastic help throughout.
	I am grateful for the amendments that have been brought forwardand especially the one dealing with respect for diversityalthough they are weaker than I would have preferred. In addition, it makes an awful lot of sense that the amendment dealing with the renewal of detentions should specify two clinicians. I welcome those changes, and the strengthening of the power to recall patients in the community, although I have some caveats as to how that can be done.
	However, I retain some deep concerns about CTOs, and especially about the ones that, year in and year out, will not work. I would have preferred a three-year limit on such orders. I would also have preferred the Lords to have included a Government amendment to provide an acceptable balance on impaired decision making.
	Unfortunately, I still feel that this is a bad Bill overall, but we have managed to make some progress in the end. I say that it is a bad Bill because people in my constituencyhealth service professionalsare still opposed to it for solid reasons. I believe that they are still confused by it in many ways, because of the peculiar processes involved in the old banger's long journey, which has finally come to The end.

Ivan Lewis: With all due respect to the hon. Gentleman, I should say that that balance has had to be struck in the mental health system every day of every week since time immemorial. We believe that the legislation has strengthened the approach to those difficult judgments that professionals have to make. Clearly, they have to make them within a robust legislative framework and according to best professional practice. We believe that the legislation strengthens that framework in that environment.
	The issue is not new; professionals make those agonising decisions daily, and 99 per cent. of the time they do an amazing job in getting those judgments right. In the tragic cases, of which we are all aware, the judgments are not always as we would want. However, in the vast majority of situations, specialist mental health professionals with expertise on such issues have to weigh up the considerations as an integral part of their professional practice. The legislation does not change that, but strengthens it. One of the challenges is to ensure that every professional working in mental health services should be properly trained about the implications of the Bill and how they will be expected to work.

Ann Coffey: Does my hon. Friend agree that the Opposition are being extraordinary? They agree in principle to community treatment orders, because, like us, they believe that they are a good thing, enabling patients to have treatment in the community that they would otherwise have to be admitted to hospital to receive. The issue is whether community treatment orders are a good thing, and the Opposition agree that they are, otherwise they would continue to vote against them in the House. Predicting whether there will be an increase or a decrease is not the issue. The issue is whether they are going to be properly applied.

Jessica Morden: I am grateful for the opportunity to raise in the Chamber a matter of great importance to my constituents. I am pleased that I am giving the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Wright), his first opportunity to respond in his new role. I wish him well in carrying out his ministerial responsibilities. We worked closely together when he stood in the Hartlepool by-election. When we were tramping the streets of Hartlepool many years ago, little did I know that he would one day respond to my Adjournment debate. I am sure that his reply will be an early hallmark of a long and successful ministerial career.
	I applied for the debate on behalf of my constituents, businesses and Newport city council. They have contacted me about the consequences of unauthorised encampments set up by Gypsies and Travellers in my constituency. I appreciate that the issue is sensitive and I acknowledge and welcome the steps that the Government and the Welsh Assembly are taking to address some of the difficulties faced by Gypsies and Travellers. The Assembly obviously has some responsibility for such matters, but the law of trespass, which I will mention later, is the UK Government's responsibility.
	Newport has a particular problem with unauthorised encampments due to its locationit is one of the gateways to Wales and it is on the M4 corridor. Over the past few years, the city of Newport has witnessed a wave of unauthorised camps being set up on significant community areas, including parks and school playing fields. There are problems to do with unauthorised encampments, and the cost of enforcement action and of clearing them up is unsustainable and locally very unpopular. It is estimated that about 18 million is spent each year on enforcement action in the UK.
	In the past year, there have been 16 encampments on sensitive sites in Newport. Three were on school playing fields, causing damage to the fields and putting them out of bounds to the children for a total of 20 days. Five were on the grounds of a stately home, Tredegar house, and that not only affected visitors but put events in jeopardyweddings, for example, were at risk of cancellation. Three were at Newport international sports village. They put the car park out of commission and thereby prevented the public from accessing the facilities. Three were in Coronation park, which is one of the main venues for community sport in my constituency. That put in jeopardy a major youth soccer tournament, which was attended by about 3,000 people and organised by volunteers from the Newport Corinthians football club. Caravans were parked on football pitches, causing damage and giving rise to major clear-up costs. The remaining two encampments were on other parks in the city.
	Costs and the time needed to return facilities to good use were particularly critical in the case of the occupation of the school playing fields and Coronation park. In total, costs of over 10,000 were incurred in removing the rubbish and making the playing fields safe for schoolchildren to use again. I recognise that Gypsy and Traveller communities have their own legitimate needs and expectations and I support their right to live life as they choose. They have the right to be treated with dignity and respect. Although many Gypsies and Travellers act responsibly, sadly, my constituents regularly bring me stories that show that that is often not the case. Neither the Travellers nor the settled community should be able to ignore each other's legitimate expectations or prevent their enjoyment of life. The settled community also has the right to access its community facilities. Settled communities have the right to run youth soccer games in city parks, schoolchildren have the right to play safely on their school field and the public have the right to access parks and sports facilities.
	Each year, unauthorised encampments continue to spring up. I appreciate that Newport does not have a permanent site. The Welsh Assembly Government have responded positively to the detailed report that they commissioned on the needs of Gypsies and Travellers in Wales and they are now working on a strategy that will have important implications for the provision of services in the long term, but in the meantime Newport works with neighbouring authorities in south Wales to provide alternative arrangements. The Assembly's commissioned report acknowledges that even in areas with existing Gypsy/Traveller sites, unauthorised encampments continue to be problematic. Its findings on the number of unauthorised encampments show that a significant number still occur, including in areas run by authorities that have official designated sites.
	The effect of unauthorised encampment is to worsen inter-community relations and cohesion. That in turn makes it difficult for the council to identify a site. The endless round of court notices and eviction enforcements means that everyone, from settled neighbours to Travellers and their families, become exasperated, and council officials and the local police are often caught in the middle of difficult situations. The result is that the public's experience makes them fearful of the consequences of having a site in their area.
	For the council and the police, the current legislation on trespass encourages tensions. Some argue that they would like the laws of trespass changed to bring us into line with the Republic of Ireland, where there are stronger powers to enable the police to deal with trespass. Will the Minister look at the experience in Ireland to see whether there are lessons that we could learn, and may we consider how the law works there? Residents who have experienced the after effects of an unauthorised encampment often ask whether, at the very least, certain sites could be designated as sensitive. By that, they mean school playing fields, parks, school grounds and sports facilities. That way, people in the settled community can continue to live their lives.
	I want to stress that there is good co-operation between Newport City council and Gwent police, who take their duty of care very seriously. The two work in partnership to ensure the best outcome for both sets of communities. They seek to engage positively with Travellers and, in consultation with them, to agree the expected standards, including site cleanliness and timetables for departure. They work hard to provide amenities and carry out the appropriate welfare checks. They try to act quickly when sensitive sites are involved. However, no matter how hard they try, on occasions it is not possible to gain movement without an expensive and time-consuming process. In the meantime, school playing fields, parks and other community facilities are put out of use.
	The suggestion therefore is that on designated sites we impose stricter control and a trespass law, which would mean that occupation of those sites could be regarded as a criminal rather than a civil act. Failure to leave the site immediately would result in swift action and, most importantly, the threat of action could serve as a deterrent to unauthorised encampment in the future. The designation of sensitive sites could be agreed by local authorities and the relevant police forces together, and the areas could be published and subject to challenge through the courts on grounds of reasonableness. That could provide a better balance of rights and responsibilities than exists and could give both communities greater clarity as to what is and what is not acceptable.

Iain Wright: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, East (Jessica Morden) on securing a debate on such an important topic to her and her constituents. I pay tribute to the dignified, reasoned and eloquent way in which she conveyed her argument. She mentioned the Hartlepool by-election. She was one of the first people who came to help me in that by-electionhelp me get to this placeand I cannot think of anybody else to whom I would rather respond on my first run-out at the Dispatch Box.
	My officials have told me that my hon. Friend has worked assiduously on behalf of her constituents on this issue, and I hope her constituents and agencies in Newport recognise what such a strong and valuable constituency MP my hon. Friend is. As she pointed out, responsibility for Gypsy and Traveller issues is devolved to the Welsh Assembly Government, so although I can provide information on the position in Wales where it differs from that in England, she will appreciate that I am not able to comment directly on the Assembly's behalf.
	My hon. Friend highlighted in a powerful way some of the problems that can be created by unauthorised Gypsy and Traveller sites and the tensions that they cause with the settled community. At the root of those problems is the shortage of authorised sites for Gypsies and Travellers, which is forcing them on to unauthorised sites. The Government believe that everyoneI stress everyone in the community should have the opportunity of a decent place to live. There is currently no such opportunity for households in about 20 per cent. of Gypsy and Traveller caravans across England and Wales. That is unacceptable and we are committed to increasing the number of authorised, good quality sites in the same way as we are committed to increasing the supply and quality of conventional affordable and social housing. Increased site provision, coupled with effective use of enforcement powers against unauthorised sites, and a joined-up approach between the various organisations with a role in Gypsy and Traveller and broader housing issues, is vital to addressing the problems that my hon. Friend has highlighted and helping to create strong, cohesive communities.
	Although we do not need a large amount of land to address the shortage of authorised sites for Gypsies and Travellers, it can be particularly challenging to deliver specific land for sites. Many people do not want sites built near to them. They have fears about them that are based on rumour, conjecture and misinformation. A MORI poll in 2003 found that a third of those surveyed felt personally prejudiced against Gypsies and Travellers. It is a prejudice that is still widely regarded as acceptable to express in a way that would be considered offensive against any other group. But it is a prejudice that is groundless, and I would like to take this opportunity to dispel some common myths. Research undertaken by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation investigated the experiences of neighbours who had objected to the establishment of three authorised sites, after the sites had been up and running for between one and four years. Most householders acknowledged that their fears had proved groundless. The police reported no noticeable increase in crime in the vicinity of the sites. Schools in those areas were able to cope with the additional pupils from the sites and reported that the Gypsy and Traveller children had integrated well socially.
	Gypsies and Travellers are required toand dopay council tax, whether or not their sites have planning permission, and they are active in their local communities. For example, Candy Sheridan, an Irish Traveller, is a councillor for North Norfolk district council. Blue Jones, a Romany Gypsy, represents Kent on the National Youth Parliament. Kedra Goodall, a Gypsy, recently sought selection as the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Hammersmith and got through to the final four.
	Well-managed, good quality sites can support cohesive, sustainable communities. The Ridgewell site near Halstead in Essex is just one example. The site is well integrated with the local community, with residents, members of the local neighbourhood watch scheme and patrons of the mobile library service, which regularly visits the site. So there are incentives for everyoneGypsies and Travellers, local authorities and the settled communityto increasing site provision. Those extend beyond the obvious benefits of reducing unauthorised camping and the tensions that that can create with the settled community, of which my hon. Friend has spoken so eloquently.
	Site provision will reduce the amount of resources that authorities spend on costly enforcement action. As my hon. Friend mentioned, this has been estimated by the Commission for Racial Equality at 18 million a year, and described by the Audit Commission in relation to one local authority as a wasteful use of resources. Bristol city council has seen its enforcement costs drop from 200,000 to 5,000 a year since building a new authorised site. One result of that saving has been that its leisure services department has been able to spend an additional 40,000 a year improving the environment through investment in local parks and open spaces. I am sure that that approach is relevant and pertinent to my hon. Friend's experience, and I hope that she will take it up and begin to implement it in her constituency.
	The provision of authorised sites also makes it quicker and easier to take enforcement action where unauthorised camping does take place. A range of powers are available to landowners, local authorities and the police to deal with unauthorised encampments, where Gypsies and Travellers camp on land that they do not own. Those range from common law powers and civil procedures in the county court, to the powers of local authorities and the police to direct trespassers to leave land in certain circumstances.
	My hon. Friend asked me to look at the experience in Ireland where stronger powers are available to deal with trespass, and to consider making trespass a criminal offence where it occurs on certain sensitive sites. Although trespass itself is not a criminal offence, it is already a criminal offence for a trespasser to fail to leave when directed to do so by a local authority or the police, or to return within three months. Our task group on site provision and enforcement, chaired by Sir Brian Briscoe, a former chief executive of the Local Government Association, has reviewed the operation of enforcement powers and taken evidence from local authorities and others. The group concluded that rather than making changes to those powers, authorities should be helped to use them more effectively. It recommended that we work closely with the Local Government Association and the Improvement and Development Agency to secure improvements in performance, and we will do so.
	Police powers to direct trespassers to leave land will often be the quickest, as they can be used without reference to the courts. However, there are other things that authorities and the police can do to speed up the process, including having protocols in place to deal with cases of unauthorised sites. However, as the interim report of our task group makes clear, and as I have already stressed, enforcement action will always be quicker and more effective where appropriate authorised sites are available. We recognise that until sufficient numbers of authorised sites are available, local authorities, Gypsies and Travellers can be left in a difficult position. Authorities may want to consider whether enforcement action is absolutely necessary. Where an unauthorised encampment is in an obtrusive location, authorities could seek to agree a departure date with the campers. However, as in the instances described by my hon. Friend, there will be some locations where encampments are not acceptablefor example, where they prevent the use of important local amenities such as sports fields or stately homes for weddings. In those instances, authorities could seek to agree a less damaging location.
	Having enough good quality accommodation will help to tackle the serious social exclusion experienced by Gypsies and Travellers and improve health and education outcomes. The average life expectancy of a Gypsy or Traveller is 10 to 12 years less than that of a member of the settled community. Gypsy and Traveller mothers are almost 20 times more likely to experience the death of a child. Twenty-two per cent. of Irish Traveller children and 15 per cent. of Gypsy children achieve five or more good GCSE grades, compared with 55 per cent. of children in the settled population.
	In order to achieve the increase in accommodation we are seeking we have established a new framework for authorised site provision. Local authorities in England and Wales are required by the Housing Act 2004 to undertake accommodation needs assessments for Gypsies and Travellers in the same way as they do for the rest of the community. I understand that assessments have been completed, or are now under way, in 90 per cent. of authorities in England. We want all those to be complete by the end of the year. In England, regional assemblies will take a strategic view of need and set out the number of pitches that each local authority will be expected to deliver. Local authorities will then need to identify sites to deliver those pitches in their development plan documents. I am sure that my hon. Friend, as a Welsh MP, will be interested to hear that in Wales the National Assembly has consulted on planning guidance that would require local authorities whose accommodation assessments have identified unmet need for Gypsy and Traveller sites in their areas to identify sites to meet that need in their local development plans.
	To back up that new framework, we have increased the resources available to local authorities for Gypsy and Traveller sites. In England, up to 56 million is available between 2006 and 2008 for providing new sites and refurbishing existing sites through the Gypsy and Traveller site grant. In Wales, 3 million is being made available between 2007-08 and 2009-10 to refurbish existing sites. We are beginning to make progress, but we need to step up the pace. We will work with local authorities and regional assemblies to provide challenge and support as they tackle this important issue.
	The new framework that we have established is crucial to making progress on site provision, and coupled with effective enforcement action and a joined up approach to the issues, it will help create strong, cohesive communities. Only by significantly increasing the number of authorised sites will we ensure that allI stress allparts of the community have a decent place to live. That will reduce the tensions that unauthorised sites can cause with the settled community, as mentioned by my hon. Friend, reduce the need for, and cost of, enforcement action, and make it easier to use enforcement powers as well as improving the life outcomes of the most socially excluded group in our society.
	I would like once again to congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate and affording me the opportunity to explain why site provision is so important and how we need to see it in the wider context of affordable and appropriate accommodation for all.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Adjourned accordingly at twenty-two minutes to Seven o'clock.